Midnight for the Nameless Witch
by LA Knight
Summary: Faceless, nameless, a regular witch swept up in wars against enemies from without... and within. Juliet Moon is nothing special, but within her circle of friends, she can see behind the lies to the truth of things... for her lies are absolutely flawless.
1. To Alleviate Any Fears

**When there is a question as to the Mary-Sue level of a fanfic I'm working on, I do this - post a chapter with the results of the Mary Sue litmus test in the beginning of the fanfic. This way, I can avoid any misunderstandings. So, I went and found the Mary Sue Litmus Test made specifically for Harry Potter. The questions and my answers are below, and my score is at the bottom. If you don't give a flying flip about this, skip to the chapter after this. If you do, I hope you enjoy what you find.**

**- LA Knight**

**Section 1 - The Name Game**

Is the character named after you? (This can be your first name, middle name, or the name you go by in chat or irc.) If so, stop now. Put your pencil (mouse?) down and turn in your test.  
_No. My real name is Cathryn. It doesn't even start with the same letter._

Does the character have a really cool name that you wish you had?  
_No. Juliet is a stupid name. No offense to people named Juliet. But I mean... Juliet Moon? That's like... Shakespeare Shapiro or Charlie Bucket or Kate Katherine. Blah. The only reason her last name is Moon is because I grabbed the name out of HP and the Sorcerer's Stone during the Sorting._

Does the character have more than one name? (i.e. a nickname or a pseudonym) for example, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs.  
_Yes. Jules. Because everyone has nicknames. But only her parents and some siblings call her that. And Bookworm. That's more like a hideous moniker._

Did you spend more than a day looking for just the right name?  
_No. I don't have that kind of time. Her name actually doesn't reflect her – it's a reflection on her father's passion – books. He named all of his daughters after literary characters (including a play and an opera)._

Have you considered naming your pet the character's name?  
_No. Who would name their cat something like that? I have 4 cats – Fa Ying, the Shadow, Lt. Commander Spot, and Moonlight the CosmiCreepers. Those are the kind of names you give cats. And I had a guinea pig named Cinnamon Toast and a spider named Fred. I would never name my cats Isabeau, Rowan, Catherine, Pamina, Tanith, Sonja, Valeria, Danica, or Juliet. Ever._

**Section 2 - Physical Attributes**

Is the character the same gender as you?  
_Yes. I don't write male main characters well. I'm working on it, though. But eleven year old boys piss me off._

Is the character from the same racial group as you? Note: if the character is a magical/genetically altered being (ex: centaur), answer yes to this question.  
_Yes. She's multiracial, like MOST PEOPLE. And yes, like me. She's just Black and White. Me, I'm Black, White, Asian, Native American, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, Mediterranean, and Eastern European._

Is the character a hybrid of two or more species? Double points for part-Veela (or full Veela), part phoenix, part unicorn (don't ask), or part cat. Animagi do not fall into this category.  
_No. Human all the way. Parents were human, grandparents human, blah, blah._

Is the character beautiful or roguishly handsome?  
_No. She's chunky, average height, wears glasses, has big, off-color teeth, frizzy hair that knots and snarls and is about the same color as mud, a speech impediment, some acne scars, average breasts, hazel eyes (most common color in the world), and normal ears._

Does one or more of the regulars find the character highly attractive?  
_No. Well, Dennis Creevey gets a mild crush on her in Book 5, but it's like, for a week or so._

Is s/he (or is s/he related to) a Veela?  
_No. Frizzy brown hair = no Veela._

Do other regulars see him/her as a threat because of this?  
_No. Most people don't even notice she exists._

Does the character have an unusual eye/hair color for no apparent reason?  
_No. Brown hair, hazel eyes, tan skin. Omg, so abnormal._

A Weasley that _doesn't_ have red hair?  
_No. She's not related to the Weasleys (unless they're like, tenth or eleventh cousins eight times removed or some random crap like that)_

Will this be a plot point later?  
_No. Her origins are totally unimportant, except that I've noticed American kids act differently than British kids. We're looser, less stiff and formal._

Does the character have an accent that is _not_ British? Students from non-Hogwarts schools (ex: Beauxbatons and Durmstrang) count.  
_Yep – she's American. No particular accent (no Southern drawl or Brooklyn snap or Valley Girl) since she's moved around a lot. More Middle of Nowhere, USA._

**Section 3 - Personal Traits**

Is the character the long-lost child, descendent, sibling, or ancestor of a regular or recurring character?  
_Yes, but most of you have probably never heard of her, she's only mentioned in Tales of Beedle the Bard – Lysette Lapin, the French witch who turned herself into a rabbit and escaped to England._

Of Sirius, Remus, Peter, or Snape?  
_No._

Of Harry, Ron, or Hermione?  
_No._

Of Malfoy, Hagrid, Voldemort, Neville, Dean, Seamus, or any other significant character mentioned in J.K.'s books?  
_No._

Of any of the 4 Hogwarts founders?  
_No._

Of another original character for whom you intend to write another story or even another series?  
_No_

Is the character an exchange student from one of the other wizarding schools?  
_No._

And traded for one of the other major characters?  
_No._

Hermione?  
_No._

Did the character have an unusual birth?  
_Yes – born outside at midnight. Nothing important about that really, other than that her parents were hiding from Death Eaters. There's no prophecy there or anything and she's not "in tune with nature" or whatever._

Does the character have a twin, a clone, or a sibling of the same gender?  
_Yes – she's the youngest of nine siblings._

About whom you plan on writing another story later?  
_No. They're just for contrast._

Is the character remarkably intelligent?  
_No. Average. Fluffy headed like Luna, but not so out there. Not good at any subjects, just average. She is, really, totally average except that she loves to read (novels, not text books)._

As smart as (or smarter than) Hermione?  
_No._

Do any of the teachers have an unusual liking toward your character?  
_No._

Does McGonnagal?  
_No._

Does Snape? (Bonus if s/he's _not_ in Slytherin)  
_No._

Do any teachers particularly dislike him/her?  
_No._

Does Snape?  
_No._

Does s/he play Quidditch?  
_No._

Is s/he exceptionally good?  
_No. She can barely stay on a broom._

Is s/he seeker?  
_No._

Is s/he in Gryffindor?  
_Yes. I wanted to point out that not EVERY Gryffindor is good, just like not every Death Eater was in Slytherin (hello! Peter Pettigrew?!)_

Does the character make more wisecracks and play more practical jokes than the Weasley twins?  
_No. She's pretty much invisible._

Because Fred and George are your favorite characters?  
_No. Although I'm sad Fred died and George lost an ear._

Does everyone end up liking the character (among the regulars you like)?  
_No. In fact, most people dislike her because she's not very friendly and she hangs with people whom no one likes (Pansy, Daphne, etc.)_

**Section 4 - Wizarding Powers**

Is the character muggle-born, or doesn't know s/he is a witch/wizard until s/he gets his/her letter?  
_No. Pure blood eight generations at least_

Does s/he get her school supplies with Hagrid?  
_No. Her mother and three sisters._

Does the character have telekinesis or telepathy? (Twins count)  
_No. When her magic is uncontrolled (common in wizarding children), it's generally destructive, but all she can do is break mirrors. Harry could regrow hair, vanish glass, talk to snakes, etc. Lily could fly, and Snape could make branches fall on people's heads. So... yeah._

Does the character just "know things" for no apparent reason?  
_No._

Is the character skilled in healing?  
_No._

Do animals instinctively like the character? (Yes, Hagrid and Charlie count)  
_No. In fact, she's terrified of dogs._

**Section 5 - The Love Connection**

Does the character fall in love with Harry, Ron, or Hermione?  
_No. Not even any crushes._

With Malfoy or Snape?  
_Yes, it's very unrequited for like, I dunno... years._

With another recurring character? Double points for James/Lily/Snape love triangles. ::gag::  
_No. She gets a crush on Oliver Wood her first year, but it's only a crush._

With whom *you* have a crush on?  
_No. I like Snape. And Voldy and Mad Eye._

Sirius?  
_No._

With another original character?  
_No._

With an original character *you* have a crush on?  
_No._

**Section 6 - The Real World and Your Character**

Would you like to be friends with the character if you met in real life?  
_No. I don't deal well with preteens (I'm an adult)._

Do you think everyone who reads the story should automatically like the character and want to be friends with the character?  
_No. If you did, I'd wonder what was wrong with you. She's crazy. She's like, on non-illegal Speed/Meth all the time. Wtf?_

If someone tells you he/she doesn't like your character, do you take it as a personal attack on you? (Be honest.)  
_Depends on how they word it. If they insult her (she's a slut/bitch/mary-sue/antichrist) without telling me why, I get annoyed, but only cause, how do I fix it if you don't tell me what the problem is?_

**Section 7 - The Fiendish Plot**

Do you introduce the character on the first page of the story? (J.K. did a great job of this in "Goblet of Fire")  
_No. The first person introduced is actually Danica, a sibling, who is very much a secondary character. Juliet is mentioned, but that's all. So are Draco, Daphne, Astoria, Crabbe, Goyle, Ginny, Luna, Neville, Colin, and Hannah._

Do you tell the story from the character's point of view, all or mostly?  
_No. I switch between parents, teachers, other kids, siblings, and my main kids._

Does the character meet the main characters, and after a few tense pages of plot, become friends with them?  
_No. She actually meets Daphne and Astoria Greengrass first, and then Pansy Parkinson and a couple other kids. They react like all girls – talk, size each other up, and forge bonds of hate or friendship._

Does the character manage to develop a friendship with an otherwise villainous character, and through this friendship, reform the other character?  
_No. While she is friends with many Slytherin "villains" such as Malfoy, she has no influence on their actions during the book. Malfoy still tries to kill Dumbledore, Crabbe still tries to kill Harry, and Pansy's still a skank._

Does the villain become evil again after the character dies, but retain some last vestige of goodness from his/her interaction with the character, evidenced in one selfless action at the end of the story?  
_No._

Is the character transformed into a magical or genetically-altered being?  
_No._

Is the character happier in her/his new form?  
_Not applicable._

Do you wish you could be transformed because of the neat powers?  
_No. I want to be transformed into something that doesn't have to pay bills and work for a living because I'm lazy as heck._

Does the character save the day and/or another character's life?  
_No._

Through magical/mystical intervention?  
_No._

Through dying?  
_No._

Does everyone go into mourning?  
_No._

Does s/he get not-dead by the end of the story? In the sequel?  
_No._

Do you plan to write many more stories revolving around this character?  
_Not many more. But depending on how the character evolves, I want to follow the Harry Potter books to the end (so, a series maybe. Dunno, though, I'm so lazy)._

.

.

My official score is 9 if I'm being nice (that's not even borderline MS) and 12 if I'm not (that's not borderline, either). And for the record, my character is none/has none of the following. None, I say:

- a beautiful singing voice  
- a magical artifact unique to her  
- skill with any type of instrument (though I give Draco some skill with a guitar)  
- a super special wand/wand with unique core  
- a member of more than one Hogwarts House  
- really good at school  
- good at any subject, actually (though she's more careful in potions for fear of serious pain)  
- read more books than Hermione (Hermione is very scholarly. Juliet reads more for pleasure, novels and story books and fairy tales and such, so I don't compare the two)  
- a cheery disposition  
- any unique talents (she's very haphazard)  
- any psychosis (she is your average American preteen/teen)  
- any super magical creatures (her cat is just a cat)

Just wanted to reassure you of that. Anyway, on to the fic.

- LA Knight


	2. 00 Prologue

**Midnight for the Nameless Witch**

**Prologue  
Danica**

.

.

Where does the forging of spirit begin? What makes children the adults they become? Who is responsible for the actions of those who have never learned to question their convictions? Is it they, or the ones that created them? Is there a single moment in a human life when, in the space between two heartbeats, a decision can be made that will alter who you will become, forever? If there is, when would it come? And how would a person learn to recognize it?

My name is Danica, but this is not my story. I'm just the narrator, the facilitator, the stepping stone. I'm the mirror that reflects the story, that leads you through the door to where the magic starts. I am a lot like my sister in that respect. Invisible, silent, never to be noticed until I'm needed. Unlike Juliet, I've always known that was my purpose – to show what needs to be seen, at just the right time.

Now is the time.

We were nothing special, the group of us. Each of us had issues, of course. Draco's father was a violent psychopath. Pansy's mother was obsessed with always being young, thin, beautiful. We called Mrs. Parkinson "the vampire" because of what she'd do to pansy. Crabbe and Goyle's parents had always told them that they were worthless, stupid, pathetic, and only Juliet tried to push them past their own self-hate. Out of all of us, those two giants were the ones that managed to get my sister to do something totally unselfish for once. Blaise's mother hated him because he was a boy, and Ginny's mother loved her too much because she was a girl. Daphne wanted so badly to be invisible, and poor, ignored Astoria wanted to tshine, but the two of them were cursed to bear the burden of the other's desire. Hannah wore the chains of tradition, and Neville wore the chains of inefficiency and clumsiness that told people he was less than what his family wanted. Even Luna, hiding behind the gossamer clouds of her own silliness, mourned for her newly dead mother. But none of us had anything special to us except, really, our own averageness. Even Draco, as rich as he was, only really had that to distinguish him. Just kids, all of us.

And hidden behind us all, never stepping out, was the girl who, if she were different, would have been the star of this story. But she was always running, always hiding, a blur that constantly flitted out of sight. She would dash away the minute anyone tried to pin her. We were the black velvet curtains behind which she hid, the mirrors that reflected emptiness to the world because she was a coward and refused to face the great, wide place the grown ups called real life.

Someone else would have stepped up to the plate and acknowledge that she was the centerpiece, the solar flare, the beginning of the story. But not Juliet. Not my selfish, cowardly, uncaring, lonely sister.

Most stories are about heroes. Most stories follow the lives of warriors or mystics, great defenders and princes and kings. But not this story. This story is the tale of one girl who made the choice to hide, so that she would never have to show the world just how ordinary she really was. Because no one wants to read about a strange, runaway witch girl who has no talents and can only say she had one real skill – accepting. And no one wants to read about someone who refuses to move past their own problems.

But she was always there in the background, watching, listening, and accepting. The binding of the book, the spine of the story. Saving her strength, her heart, her passion, for the one big thing we all knew she would have to do one day, even though she denied this was so. I'm not sure what it is she's supposed to do – saving the world, saving someone's life, having a baby who'll do either one, becoming Head of the Auror Department or the newest addition to the ranks of Dark Witches. Something like that. But she hasn't done any of that stuff, doesn't want to. Like I said, Juliet's a selfish coward. The fight against Voldemort – which raged from before we were born and ended only six months ago – is over, and it seems like we're still waiting for her to do that one, big thing.

Maybe it's a lie. Maybe there is no big thing. Maybe she's just a lazy, selfish witch who will never amount to anything because she's too self-absorbed to care about anyone else but herself. Maybe.

Then again, maybe not.

Maybe, just maybe, someone else can figure it all out. After all, that's not my job. My job is simple. I am the mirror – I reflect the story, give it to you, the listener, the reader, the seeker. I am only the narrator of this small piece of the story, the stepping stone from the present back into the past.

I am Danica Moon, and this is not my story. I belongs to Draco and Neville, the boys left on the side of the road by a prophecy about a Dark Lord and the end of an age. It belongs to the Slytherins: Daphne, Blaise, Crabbe, Goyle, and Astoria. It belongs to the Ravenclaws who loved us despite our flaws – Luna, Ralph, Parvati. To Hannah, Hufflepuff in name if not in heart. And to our Gryffindors – Ginny, Alicia, Colin, and Hank. Without all of them, there would be no story. Without our colors – green, blue, yellow, and red – there would be no rainbow. And without the truth behind the bare bones of history, our pain would not be the burden and the blessing it is. For without pain, the love in our hearts is less.

And all in all, this story belongs to my little sister, Juliet, who will always be there in the background, watching, finding the lies and truths behind everyone's masks, because hers are the most flawless of all.

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** I don't own anything copyrighted by anyone who isn't me. For the record, Ralph and Hank are original characters. I'm trying to improve how I do boys. And I think the kid's name is Ralph (the Scamander kid Luna ends up marrying, I thought it started with an R) but it might be something else, so if it is, I'll go back and edit the chapters. Reviews are great.


	3. 00 Lithe and Yule

**Midnight for the Nameless Witch**

**Prologue II  
****Lithe and Yule**

.

_It began in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, twenty-two years before...._

.

"Aaaahhhhhhhh!"

Blood gushed. Muscles contorted as they rippled with fresh waves of pain. Jenny Moon sank her teeth into her bottom lip, practically biting it through. Still the red hot lances of pain shot through her. She screamed again. Tears poured down her face.

"Come on, Jenny! You can do this!"

Panicked blue eyes looked up into her husband's face as she panted with the strain. Desperately, she shook her head. Her dirty blond hair, dripping with sweat, hung in greasy strings around her splotchy, red face. There was no way, just no way.... Agony bit into her back, her belly, her thighs. Her eyes went wide.

"I can't! I can't-"

"Jen, come on! You have to! You can do this. You can do this."

Her husband's voice, thick with the diesel and metal tang of Detroit, soothed her, gave her strength. She clutched his hand as fresh hurt slammed into her. She tasted copper fear on her tongue along with the blood. They had to get this, they had to get through this, but Jenny was so tired... so very tired... and the child....

"We need to stop, Blake," she mumbled. "We gotta stop."

"We can't stop, the Death Eaters are –"

"Honey, I can't... can't have this baby... on the run...." Jenny staggered, fell to her knees, panting. Another contraction ripped through her belly. Her breath shuddered out of her. "We need to stop. We have to stop." Gripping his hand hard enough to bruise, the American witch whispered, "I can't do this, Blake. I can't. Use the spell. There's enough time for that. Use the spell, and get you and the baby out of here."

"No. No way. You gotta keep trying, baby, come on. Just one foot in front of the other, like in the movie...."

"Use the spell, Blake. Please."

Somewhere in the underbrush, something rustled. Jenny gasped and flinched away from the sound. Running for hours, they'd only made it to the outskirts of their property. Glancing up into the sky, she saw the glittering, emerald skull and serpent writhing obscenely among the clouds. It was standing over her house, damn it! The Death Eaters had attacked her house! For a moment, rage washed out the pain , but then something inside her _ripped_.

She screamed.

Blake tried to shush her, feeling all the time like a monster. His wife was in full labor now. Nothing could stop it. They had to hold out while the baby was being born. If they were lucky – very, extremely lucky – then Isabeau and the other children had made it to their grandparents' house. Blake's father was an Auror – he could keep them safe in his home, protect the children while still somehow managing to come to the rescue. Somehow. Maybe. If they had made it. If.

Jenny grunted, holding tight to Blake's hand. She couldn't breathe. Why wouldn't Blake just perform the spell? A rustling shivered through the night. The witch gasped and then bit her tongue clean through as one fiery blast of agony ripped through her pelvis. Spitting out the piece of flesh in her mouth, she sucked in air to scream again. Her husband's hand clapped over her mouth. Whimpering, she tried to listen to the whispered words in her ear.

"Hold on. The baby's crowning. Hold on. Try to keep quiet. We can make it, you just gotta hold on for a minute. You can do it. Push. This is the hardest part. Push, Jen. Come on."

_Gotta push, she thought desperately. Must... I have to... for the baby... please...._

In the dark, beneath the midnight sky blanketed by storm clouds, Jennifer Moon sweated and whimpered, desperate to deliver her baby in silence. Around them, the wind howled and moaned. Lightning forked the sky. The moon, washed out and misted over by the oncoming storm, was only a ghostly blur against the darkness. And somewhere in that darkness, the Death Eaters were hunting them. Silently, she prayed that someone, anyone – even her husband's father, who despised her with fully reciprocated loathing – would come, and soon. She was practically silent, only the occasional whimper or teeth-grinding, lip-pursed moan. But once the baby was out....

_Please don't cry,she begged her child silently. You must not cry. You can't. We'll all be killed. Please don't cry. Just be all right, and healthy, and don't cry._

Finally, after what seemed like a century of night, just as the moon broke through the clouds and midnight struck, Jenny heard a tiny, gasping sound. Absurdly, she was reminded of the animated Grinch movie. Jenny's great-grandmother had been a Muggle. Jenny herself had grown up in a house with a magical tea set, the World Wide Web, a house elf, and a vast library of VHS tapes. Now she was suddenly reminded of little Cindy Lou-Who, and that soft sound she made when she saw the Grinch-Claus. That was the only sound Jenny's new daughter made as she came into the world – a desperate, sort of gasping sigh.

"Oh, thank God," Blake whispered. But he wasn't talking to Jenny, and he wasn't talking about the baby, who came complete with a full head of curly, dark brown hair like Jenny's. Instead, he was referring to the strange, streaking balls of pale blue light soaring toward them through the night sky – the official color of the American Aurors.

.

_Newark, New Jersey – Five and a half years later...._

.

The baby – no longer a baby, now, but a little girl of five – stood staring into the mirror in her mother's powder room, trying to make herself grow up. She wore lipstick spread inexpertly across her mouth, some blush, and the black cocktail dress her mom saved for dinner parties. Under her breath, she muttered, "Get bigger. Come on. Grow up. Grow up. I don't want to be ugly anymore. Grow up. Be pretty."

"Hey, Bookworm!"

Bookworm was not her name. Her name was Juliet Moon.

Spinning around, she caught sight of her sister, Tanith, standing in the doorway to her parents' room. Tall, willowy, and pale, with bone-straight hair down to her butt and their father's warm, brown eyes, Tanith was everything Juliet wanted to be. A famous novelist, she was also a powerful witch with her own wand and a knack for fancy charm work. Instead, the five-year-old witch was short, chubby, her skin a dull golden color, and had frizzy, spastic hair the color of wet sand and eyes like graveyard mold. The absence of her top two front teeth left a rather conspicuous gap in her smile. A thin scar ran from the roots of her hair down her cheek to curve under and around her right ear, pale against her natural coloring. She hated that scar. And she still hadn't shown any penchant for witchery.

"Go away, Tan."

"What are you doing up here, Worm?"

"Tanith," a stern voice called from the hallway. Both girls jumped when their oldest sister, Isabeau, strode up to Tanith, heels clicking on the stone of the hallway floor. Her bronze hair pulled up into a bun, her eyebrows forming a copper colored V on her face, the oldest Moon child was rather intimidating. "Leave Juliet alone. Go back downstairs. Yule Log's about to go on the fire, you haven't made your wish yet."

"Beau, that's kid stuff-"

"Downstairs. Now."

Thirteen-year-old Tanith gave way before Isabeau's fierce, hawk-like glare. It wasn't until the scuttling sounds of their sister's departure faded down the stairs that the angry look on Isabeau's face vanished like it had never been. She turned back to her youngest sister – the youngest of nine – and said gently, "It's nearly midnight, Juliet."

"So what?"

"Time to get changed and go downstairs."

"No. Won't. Don't wanna."

"Don't be truculent."

"What dat means?"

"Bitchy." Isabeau smiled down at her sister, who glared up at her from underneath frizzy locks of hair falling in front of her face. "Don't be bitchy. Change your clothes. The twins will make fun of you if they catch you in Mom's dress."

There was a long silence. Then Juliet murmured softly, "I want to be a grown up."

"Why?"

"I wanna be pretty. I want to have magic."

"No," Isabeau whispered. "You don't." For a moment, those hawk eyes dulled with something strange and melancholy. Juliet shivered. The movement caught Isabeau's attention, bringing the witch back to the present. Shaking herself like a dog, the twenty-something law student tapped her wand against her little sister's lips and cheeks, erasing the red makeup. "Don't try to grow up too fast, kid. You're only five. Enjoy it while it lasts." Gently, she helped the little girl out of the cocktail dress. Tapping Juliet on the top of her head, Isabeau murmured, "_Slippiski. Hosea. Amparo. Chapeau._"

Juliet looked into the mirror again and frowned. Black Mary-Jane shoes, white tights, cranberry velvet party dress, dark velvet bow on top of fly-away witch hair. She hated her reflection. Her scar was far too pale, her skin way too dark. Her hair was like a giant tumbleweed sitting on top of her head. The bow didn't make her look any better. It just made it all worse. She was nothing but an ugly, nameless witch with no powers.

"You forgot to fix my hair," she mumbled. It was the only thing she could see that was fixable without some serious potioneering.

"No I didn't. God, you're ungrateful. Come on. Come downstairs. We're all waiting for you. Hurry up." Isabeau walked out, immaculate and gorgeous in her lilac-pinstriped violet business suit.

Juliet watched her go, eyes burning. She clenched her fists, digging her short nails into her palms. Rage, sudden and consuming and hot, bubbled up inside the little girl's chest, threatening to spill over. Eyes like broken glass the color of graveyard mold fixated on the mirror. Thin little lips pinched into tight, white lines. Spots of color flared up in her cheeks. Downstairs, the grandfather clock began to chime midnight.

She wasn't ungrateful! Isabeau hadn't _done_ anything! It was like taking a pig and putting makeup on it to turn it into a supermodel – it wouldn't work. The five-year-old thought this as she looked in the mirror, at the flesh her parents called "baby fat" and her sisters called "gross," at her hair that never laid flat and always snagged on everything, at her face like a rotten orange. Juliet hated her reflection, hated how she looked. She was worse than a pig. Instead of being a gorgeous witch like her eight sisters and her mother, she was an ugly Squib! Her foot came down in something too violent to be a stamp. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. One fist scrubbed hastily at her blotchy red nose, trying to stop the river of snot waiting to pour out. Knuckles effectively wiped away tears audacious enough to get past her eyelashes. Her sobs swelled in her throat, choking her. Juliet hated to cry. She hated it!

_I hate this, _she thought frantically, desperately, achingly, at the mirror. Blood vessels stood out in stark relief against the whites of her eyes. Sniffing hard, she glared at the silvered glass and screamed at it in her mind, _I hate it, I hate you, hate you, hate you, I hate you, _"**_I hate you!_**"

The looking glass exploded in a shower of tinkling, chiming fragments.

.

.

.

.

.

.

**Concerning the Prologue Title**: Lithe is the name of several things. I'm going to list them all, from least relevant to most. One, a villain in the _Sailor Moon Stars_ arc (the anime was never aired in America due to gender transformation and homosexual themes, but the manga was translated into English). Two, the goddess of forgetfulness in Greek myth (though that's spelled both Lithe and Lethe) and three, the River of Forgetfulness in the Greek underworld. Four, a fairy in the Brian Froud universe.

Finally, it's one of the names for the pagan holiday of the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. It's sometime in June (19-23, depending on where you live). This is the relevant usage. The veil between the "real world" and the magical world is thinnest on the Equinox and Solstice days – March 19-23, June 19-23, September 19-23, and December 19-23. Because of this, the beginning of this story – my character's origins, the revelation of her powers, and the receipt of her letter from Hogwarts, all occur at midnight on the night of Lithe or Yule. From _Goblet of Fire_, we know that Yule is around Christmas. It's actually the Winter Solstice.

**Concerning Juliet's Nationality:** I made my main character American for one very simple reason – I have a way, way, way hard time writing English people. I'm American. I've actually been to England. But I don't get English people. I just don't. So... meh. She's American. Cho Chang is from Hong Kong (I think) and since they never mention American witch schools (and since schooling in America bites super hard core) I know if my parents could have afforded it, they probably would've sent me overseas to boarding school (thanks, Mom & Dad – sarcasm) so I figure, why not? I mean, they sent my brother to military school. Although if they'd done that to me (1,200 dollars/semester, man) I probably would've run away or tried to kill myself. Literally. No joke.

So I decided I wanted to write an HP fanfic where an American is sent to Europe because they have better schools, to a place where she's looked down upon because she's a half-blooded American (well, ¾ blooded) and can't go home because her parents refuse to let her. Then I decided to have her family move to England first when I found out there was a school in Salem, Mass. Besides, Stratford (where they move to) is just a deliciously cute place. Lovely flowers in March. But anyway, I mean, what would that do to someone? Being sent to boarding school in a totally new country and having no friends, not the March flowers of Stratford. I personally probably would have committed suicide or attempted to commit it as a teen in that situation (I have more than 10 attempted suicides on my record) but I don't know my new character well enough to tell. In my opinion, most people would see being kicked out of your house to get sent to a school miles and miles away as a form of parental rejection. I had that issue with summer camp.

She's not gonna kill herself, though, because I refuse to end any story with the death of the main character. I won't do it. So no worries there. But I just want to see... some teen darkness in the HP universe from people that isn't Voldemort oriented. More teen drama – eating disorders, drugs, booze, smoking, sex, pain, break ups, hang ups, love, loss, death of non-homo sapien beings, etc.


	4. 01 News

**AN:** _Takes place the summer before Harry's first year at Hogwarts (whatever year that is, I can't seem to pin down a legitimate time line). Warning: an excerpt from Juliet's diary appears in this chapter. Her shorthand is atrocious. Full references and author's note at bottom of chapter._

**_At the bottom of this chapter:  
_**Disclaimer  
References in This Chapter  
Origin of Names  
Books Mentioned in This Chapter:  
Resources

**Chapter One  
****News**

**_Godric's Hollow, England, UK_**

Cornelius Fudge sputtered as he choked on his Earl Gray tea. Mopping up his wet chin and beard with a crisp, white handkerchief, he managed to gasp out, "Exchange students?"

"Not exactly, Minister, as I said. A wizarding family is moving to Stratford in a few weeks from America and so I have decided that their children – all of them strong witches, and four of them still in need of an education – should attend Hogwarts. Of course it is up to the parents as to whether they attend, but I thought the invitation should be extended."

Albus Dumbledore adjusted his half-moon glasses on his crooked nose and smiled gently at the flustered Minister of Magic. The Headmaster of Hogwarts knew that Cornelius was incredibly prejudiced against many groups – Muggles, Muggle-born witches and wizards, Squibs, and foreigners at the top of the list. According to Fudge, Americans were second-worst only to the French. But Dumbledore had a feeling that at least three of the four Moon girls would benefit greatly from Hogwarts attendance.

"Are you certain about this, Dumbledore? I mean, nothing against them, but... Yankees? At Hogwarts?"

"Trust me, Cornelius. I have a feeling that this might be... well. Let's just say I have a good feeling."

.

**_Newark, New Jersey, USA_**

"_I got a bad feeling. I don't know what I'm supposed 2 do. Don't know how 2 react 2 stuff NEmore. I don't wanna B emo. Where do ya draw lines? Emo music = _good_ stuff. But techno, jazz, Celtic, scream-o, black symphonic = rox sox. Don't know if I'm worrying 4 nothing or not. Maybe I'm just eclectic._

_Except 4 Mom & the girls. Even Dad's doing it. They always yell me, seems like. I'm 10 – not old enough to be hormonal yet. What the deal? Am I verbally abused home? Crazy? Suicidal or emo? Emotionally void? A repressed almost-preteen trying to achieve self-actualization? Or am I just an angsty panda? Too sensitive 4 my own good? Life is so effing fru-"_

Juliet threw her composition book onto the floor at the sound of a painful, avian squawk that shattered her concentration. Glaring out the window of her third-story bedroom, she saw twenty-one-year-old Pamina conjure a flock of birds from the highest fork of the tree that grew beside the east gable. Ever since she'd read _Sunlight and Shadow,_ 'Mina'd been obsessed with calling/conjuring birds. Dull eyes, pale green, took in everything and nothing as her mind evacuated the irritating situation and went back to considering her own.

Tomorrow was her birthday. She would be eleven, eligible for the Salem Institute of Witchcraft in Massachusetts. By rights, the acceptance letter should have come back in May, when she managed to get out of Muggle sixth grade. Now it was near the end of June. No letter. The twins teased, her older sisters and her father worried, and her grandfather harrumphed about it. Juliet did something else.

She brooded.

Her powers had been late in coming, and were hard to control. She wasn't a Squib by any means, and the Muggle blood in her family was so far back in the past (more than eight generations) that she doubted it was because of this that her parents watched her from the corner of their eye, anxious to catch any whiff of potential magic. Unfortunately, the one thing her magic did consistently was so dangerous that her parents wouldn't allow it to happen anymore – when she looked in a mirror, it exploded. Her parents had removed all of the looking glasses except the ones in their room, Isabeau's room (she needed it to do her hair for work), and Pamina's room (Pamina had the unique talent of being able to sing in harmony with her reflection, something quirky enough to be endearing to their parents and considered stupid by everyone else). But for some reason, Juliet's magic only pushed through in that one, destructive method.

Mirrors shattered. That was all. No pictures in the fireplace, no moving objects or knowing things before they happen or sparks flicking out of her fingers. Nothing even close to animal empathy or seeing fairies, nothing like that. Nope. Just exploding mirrors.

Maybe that's why she hadn't gotten her letter. They wouldn't let such a "destructive influence" into their school.

Destructive influence. That's what they called her at school. Her parents couldn't explain away the broken glass in the bathrooms at her schools over the years, and she wouldn't bother. Juliet knew why the mirrors would break. It was no one's business but hers. At the beginning, it had been accidentally-on-purpose. The sight of her reflection, the violent surge of loathing, and the resulting explosion happened so quickly that at first she couldn't stop it and later didn't bother to try. Why should she? Why should she hide how she felt? Pamina and Catherine, a musician and dancer respectively, both said she ought to express herself. Besides, her friends thought it was cool, what she did.

Now, she couldn't control it anymore. She didn't care.

"What's got you so solemn up in here?"

Juliet turned to see her second-oldest sister, Rowan, standing in the doorway. Long, bone-straight black hair hung to her back, she had the classic bone structure that only half of the nine Moon girls had inherited from their grandmother. Brown eyes like malt whiskey, they latched onto Juliet like a laser playing tag. The ten-year-old noticed the Starfire 99 clutched in her sister's hand. It was one of the newest American brooms, comparable to the Nimbus 2000s over in England. Rowan was going flying. Juliet checked her watch and saw that it was almost midnight. Fifteen minutes till her eleventh birthday.

"Why is 'Mina outside still?"

"Conjuring, I think. Don't care. It's midnight. Why you hiding in your room? You never stay up this late just to brood."

Rowan glanced at her little sister's bookcase and decided it was no wonder the ten year old was so depressed all the time. On the nightstand between her bed and bookcase were a stack of paperbacks, all dog-eared, the spines very gently worn: _the Diary of Anne Frank, Romeo and Juliet, Romiette and Julio, the Warrior Heir, Flowers in the Attic, the Carnivorous Carnival, Deerskin. _All of them, books that were dark and brutal and painful, novels the rest of the girls had given their sister because they were too depressing for the rest of them to read.

"You should get outta here, kid. It's a cool night. We could fly."

"I can't fly, Ro, you know that."

Juliet chewed the inside of her cheek. Her parents bought her a broom every time she got too big for the last one. It sat in the shed next to the other eight, balanced against the wall, accusing her with the layers of dust and the air of neglect that clung to it. No magic. No flying. No midnight flights with the other girls after dark when their parents weren't awake to stop them.

"It never hurts to try, Jules," Rowan replied. "Come on."

"Yes, it does," she whispered, but followed her anyway.

They went to the shed to get the other broomstick. Rowan had her own top-notch broom that she'd paid for herself, but Juliet's allotted broomstick wasn't exactly the greatest. She wasn't the greatest flier, either. Her Cleansweep was held in a white-knuckled fist. Graveyard mold eyes watched Rowan straddle the broom and kick off.

She felt the cold wood of the broom against her skin and shivered. Never had she been able to get off the ground before. The one thing all of her siblings could do – fly – was beyond her. But the ten-year-old slid the broomstick between her knees and closed her eyes. Sweat trickled against her palms. Her heart hammered. It wasn't going to work, it never did....

The hooting of an owl stole her attention. As her eyes opened, a letter dropped to the grass beside her. She glanced at it and saw the official seal molded into the crimson blob of wax on the back.

It wasn't from the Salem Institute.

.

"What is this?" Juliet demanded, holding it out to her parents.

All nine Moon sisters sat on the king-sized couch, staring at their mother and father across the plain, birch wood coffee table. Blake and Jenny Moon looked at each other, one long, meaningful glance, then looked out at their nine children. The letter their youngest daughter held bore the seal of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, one of the two leading wizarding schools in western Europe. Similar letters were clutched in the fifteen-year-old twins' – Sonja and Valeria, both hot-tempered and irritated – clenched fists. Danica, the second youngest at twelve-years-old, didn't even glance at the missive as she tossed it carefully and gently onto the coffee table. Eyes the color of warm honey met Juliet's green ones. Even Dan was nervous about this bizarre turn of events.

"It looks like a letter, to me," Blake Moon replied, shrugging.

Juliet narrowed her eyes at him. Did her parents think she was stupid? Obviously it was letter. Her dad couldn't downplay this like it wasn't important. Were they shipping her and the other three girls still in school off to another freaking continent for school? Why? What was going on? Knowing that both adults would see her clenching her fists, the now-eleven-year-old scrunched up her toes in her shoes. It hurt, which helped her think somewhat more calmly. There was one other explanation for this whole thing, but she didn't know which thought was worse – her parents packing them off, or....

"Are we moving?" Danica asked quietly. Isabeau sat up straight. Catherine, out of habit, flexed her feet, pointing her callused toes, while Pamina pursed her lips and Tanith crossed her arms in front of her chest. Valeria and Sonja made a sound that might have been a snarl in two-part harmony. Juliet felt her chest squeeze shut on her heart, felt her blood freeze. Moving... they couldn't move.

"We were going to tell you after Juliet's birthday," their mother began, but was immediately cut off by the outraged protests of seven of her daughters. Danica said nothing, only watched as her younger sister jumped off the couch and strode back upstairs to her room.

With a muttered oath, Juliet swept into her room, gently closed the old, worn door, and locked it. Then, a hundred-and-forty-eight pounds of preteen threw itself onto her bed. The letter was clutched in one trembling fist. The address read:

_Ms. Juliet R. Moon  
__Right-hand Attic Bedroom  
__1453 Shiver Spike Road  
__Newark, New Jersey  
__United States of America_

She hadn't even read it. Now she did. Unfolding the parchment letter, her eyes drank in the handwritten emerald words:

**HOGWARTS SCHOOL  
_of_ WITCHCRAFT _and_ WIZARDRY  
**-  
Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE  
_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,  
__Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. Of Wizards)_

Dear Ms. Moon,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.  
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall  
_Deputy Headmistress_

Juliet's eyes burned. Blinking hard, pressing her knuckles against her gritty eyelids, she rolled over onto her back. Moving. What was she supposed to tell everyone? Her friends? And why England? She figured it had to be somewhere in Britain because anywhere else and they'd be in Durmstrang (which she'd seen a picture of), Beauxbaton Academy (which she'd heard of butter never seen), or that one school in Madrid that she could never remember the name of but had known a kid who went there for a year.

So. They were going to move to England.

Why?

Under normal circumstances, she might have stayed downstairs to find out exactly that. But the witch had felt her chin begin to quiver when it had been revealed that no only were the Moons going to move, but that Jenny and Blake had been keeping this information from the rest of the family. She'd had to make a quick getaway before her lip began trembling. Now Juliet allowed the tears to fill her eyes. They couldn't move _to another country_! Besides, British people despised Americans! Or so she'd heard on the news. Personally, the frizzy-haired brunette didn't want to risk it.

Someone knocked on her door.

"If you come in, I'm throwing something heavy," she warned, rolling onto her stomach and covering her head with a pillow. If her parents saw her crying, they'd tell her to cheer up, stiff upper lip, all that jazz. Same if Isabeau, Catherine, or 'Mina saw her. Anyone else... imminent torment awaited.

The door opened, and Jenny Moon peeked into her daughter's room.

"Juliet?"

"Madame," she retorted, hiding behind words. "I am here. What is your will?" Trying to regain her composure before her mother attempted to get her to come out from under the pillow, she tried to remember the rest of the scene. Luckily, the film had stuck that part of the play in her mind, so it wasn't difficult to remember.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Her mother asked.

"Not to you."

"Juliet, I don't understand why you're upset. You've never liked going to Muggle schools, and you never seemed to really care that much about going to the Institute. You never play with other children, we're not leaving any relatives behind, what with Portkeys and Apparating and... I don't get it, Jule."

_Obviously, she thought waspishly. Never mind that I have to leave behind all my friends. Can't tell you that, since I'm not supposed to be friends with any of them. Jeez. Aloud, all she said was, "There's nothing to get."_

"Then why are you upset?"

Finally free of tears and trembling appendages, the eleven-year-old witch pulled her head out from under the pillow and looked at her mother. Jenny Moon, harassed looking, had the same silver-framed glasses she'd owned since age fifteen, the same frizz hair as Juliet, and beautiful, hazel green eyes with just a misting of gray and a spattering of golden brown. If Juliet's eyes had looked like her mother's, she'd have been happy with them. Instead, they were a nameless, nothing color. She'd read a book once where a queen had described her own eyes as looking like fridge mold, but unfortunately, the witch didn't have any of that queen's other compensations (hot king husband, super powers, immortality, long legs, etc.).

"I'm not upset," Juliet lied. If her mom couldn't figure it out, she wasn't going to get it, no matter how carefully the girl explained it to her. "I'm tired. Can I sleep, please?"

"I... guess...."

"Thank you." And she just stopped holding her body up. The tension keeping her suspended vanished, and she flopped back onto the bed like a rag doll. Jenny left her there, eyes closed. When the door closed, Juliet opened her eyes. She read the letter again. It was the end of June. They had to be in England by the end of August. Two months. Just two months, and everything was over. No more summers in Arizona, no more winters in Philly and Jersey. Her garden would die, _the Pen of Iron_ (her middle school's literary magazine) would die without her parents' funding, and she'd be packed off to boarding school.

Boarding school... jeez.

.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything copyrighted by anyone other than me. That's my all-inclusive statement. And my author's note is less than a quarter of the whole of the chapter, so it's not too long.

**References in This Chapter:**

1 – _Sunlight and Shadow_ is a novel by Cameron Dokey. It's retelling the story of _the Magic Flute_, an opera done by Mozart (I think). The main character's name in _the Magic Flute_ is Pamina. It's such a pretty name I wanted to use it. All of my character's siblings are named after literary figures. See list below.

2 - "Madame, I am here. What is your will?" is a direct quote: Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene III, line 5 (or 6)

3 – the queen Juliet remembers with "eyes like fridge mold" is Elizabeth "Betsy" Taylor from the _Undead and Un..._ series by Mary Janice Davidson.

4 – The Pen of Iron was a real literary magazine for a high school in a town in Arizona that had the ability to be published in a book (student work, all of it, rated PG13) but the project was forcibly ended by the school administration due to references to alcohol and drug abuse and addiction, suicide and attempted suicide, self harm, physical and sexual abuse, sex, depression, and celebrities such as Kurt Cobain and Marilyn Manson.

**Origin of Names:**

1 – Isabeau Gray, nee Moon – named after the title character in the movie _Ladyhawke  
_2 – Rowan Moon – named after the title character in Anne McCaffrey's _the Rowan  
_3 – Catherine Doyle, nee Moon – named after the main character in _Flowers in the Attic  
_4 – Pamina Moon – main character in the opera, _the Magic Flute  
_5 – Tanith Moon – named after famous fantasy novelist Tanith Lee  
6 – Valeria – female lead in _Conan the Barbarian  
_7 – Sonja – named after Red Sonja, the female counterpart to Conan the Barbarian  
8 – Danica – Thuli Thea (Queen) of the Avian shape shifters in the _Kiesha'ra  
_9 – Juliet – title character in _Romeo and Juliet_

**Books Mentioned in This Chapter:**

**1 – the Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank **

This is a true story, the real diary of a young Jewish girl during the Holocaust. I've never actually read it because I know that, even if it wasn't true – which it is – it would still depress me horribly and I have enough stress in my life right now.

**2 – Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare**

The famous romantic tragedy by William Shakespeare. I love it.

**3 – Romiette and Julio by Sharon M. Draper**

It's a modern retelling of the story, except with gangs who are against the black Romiette from dating Hispanic Julio. Happier ending, though.

**4 – the Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima**

Never read it, but my editor told me enough about it to depress and irritate me, but also interest me. Yeah, I'm a complicated individual (not). I want to read it, I just don't have a lot of time.

**5 – Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews**

First VC Andrews novel ever written. First heard about it on PBS. Have read this one. Very dark and disturbing. Interestingly enough, one of 2 books on Juliet's bedside table that deal with incestuous themes.

**6 – the Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket**

Book the Ninth of a Series of Unfortunate Events. A must read for anyone. Lemony Snicket is quirky and awesome.

**7 – Deerskin by Robin McKinley**

This is one of her retold fairy tales (and one of only 2 of 6 I haven't read) but I'm not actually familiar with the story it's based on. However. I do know that it's very dark – unusual for McKinley's fairy tales, which are often quirky and serious by turns – and it is the second book on Juliet's bedside table to deal with incestuous themes. However, this is not an allusion to any molestation themes or anything like that.

**Resources:**

- Conan the Barbarian by L. Sprague de Camp  
- Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews  
- Harry Potter Year 1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone  
- Harry Potter Year 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban  
- Harry Potter Year 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince  
- Kiesha'ra Volume 1: Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes  
- Ladyhawke (a movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Matthew Broderick)  
- Once Upon a Time: Sunlight & Shadow: A Retelling of "the Magic Flute" by Cameron Dokey  
- Red Sonja (a movie – all the info I can remember)  
- the Rowan by Anne McCaffrey  
- Undead and Unwed by Mary Janice Davidson


	5. 02 Diagon Alley

**Midnight for the Nameless Witch**

**Chapter Two  
****Diagon Alley**

.

Boxes. There were boxes everywhere. They filled the house, poured down the steps, exploded out onto the front porch and stacked themselves on the lawn. Isabeau carefully arranged the looking glass in her bedroom and conducted her bedclothes onto her bed and into her closet. Rowan leaned all ten of the family broomsticks in the brand new shed a few yards from the brand new, English cottage. Pamina set up the Victrola and arranged their father's collection of opera records on the gargantuan book case in the family room. Catherine pasted the mirrors and hammered the barres into the walls of her and 'Mina's bedroom, Tanith hoisted her typewriter onto the desk in the den, and the twins hung up the movie posters they'd collected over the years. Danica, surrounded by her tools and her birdhouses, stared out her bedroom window at Juliet, who trudged purposefully into town.

Juliet Moon walked into Stratford-on-Avon without any idea as to where she was going or why. A friend of hers, Raze, had told her that this was the place Shakespeare was born. The Shakespeare Museum, a tiny cottage that had once actually belonged to the Bard himself, gave tours everyday except Sunday. Maybe she'd go there. Or to the Stratford Theatre. Or to the gardens outside the museum. Actually... yes. The gardens.

The eleven-year-old trudged to the museum. Stratford wasn't very big. She could walk it. Isabeau had already been and reported back on the tulips, Juliet's favorite flower, the kind that didn't grow well where the Moons used to live. They practically exploded out of the museum garden.

Used to live....

"Mornin', luv," a man said, tipping his hat to the witch. She gave him a half-hearted smile. People didn't just randomly say "hi" to people they didn't know in the street. It really freaked her out. Sighing, she walked into the little, white-washed stone cottage with the thatched roof and met a surprised tour guide.

"Hello, dear," said the tour guide. "The next tour starts in twenty minutes-"

"I just want to look at the flowers, please," Juliet mumbled. The lady in a pinstriped black suit showed her to the gardens and left her there, giving her a puzzled look. The young witch ignored the look and sank to her knees in the earth and shoved her nose among the crimson-streaked white blooms.

Margaret Star, the museum tour guide, returned in a few minutes to check on the strange, young lady who'd requested to see the gardens. She was shocked to find the little girl hunched up in front of the tulip bed, crying quietly. Hastening over, Margaret knelt down in her black pumps on the grass and put a tentative hand on the trembling back. The girl immediately went still.

"There, there, dear. There, there."

Juliet sank down onto the grass, the early-morning dew soaking the seat of her black pants. She hadn't meant to be caught crying over some stupid flowers, but the smell of flowers in the early morning air had reminded her sharply of the garden she'd left back in America and suddenly the unfairness of it all rose up and bit her in the chest and behind her eyes. A lump rose up in her throat. She deliberately stuck her tongue between her teeth and bit down until she tasted coppery blood. Then and only then did she look up into the tour guide's face.

"Sorry about that."

"Are you quite all right?"

"Yeah." Juliet sniffed hard and swiped at her eyes with the heel of one hand. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks." She got to her feet, dusting off her knees. "You guys have beautiful flowers. They don't grow like that where I come from."

"Where are you from, dear?"

"America." The witch glanced at the tour guide from beneath her eyelashes. There was no expression of revulsion or contempt on the older woman's face, only a kind of compassion.

Margaret suddenly understood everything. This poor child had recently come to England, probably had very few friends – if any at all – and missed her home. Soon she would be starting a new school, meeting new people, in a new place, and she was most likely overwhelmed by the whole experience. And Margaret, whose husband was a wizard, had told her that a new wizarding family had moved in at the Bethalear House. Gently, the older woman patted her on the shoulder and asked, "Would you like to come into the gift shop for some tea?"

"Sure."

.

"Ready to go?" Jenny Moon called up the stairs. Rowan glanced up from the Sports Section of that morning's _Daily Prophet_ as the twins hurtled down the stairs like a pair of targeting Bludgers. Danica followed at a more sedate pace, holding several sheets of ink-covered parchment. But Juliet did not come. "Where's Jules?"

"I'm in the kitchen," she said, strolling into the den. She was munching on a piece of butter and strawberry jam toast. "Why? What's up?"

"Are you ready to go?"

Immediately, Juliet's eyes narrowed with suspicion. Go? What? What were they talking about? She had been planning on going to visit Mrs. Star again. She was a Muggle, but her husband was a wizard, and they made tea that actually tasted good instead of that Earl Gray junk her parents bought at the store. So far, Mrs. Star had enlisted the young witch to help in her personal garden. She was set to go over to the Star Cottage again in thirty minutes.

"Go where?" Juliet had to fight not to snarl at her mother. Didn't she realize that some people had plans?

"Diagon Alley," Jenny replied. "To get your school things."

"Oh, you mean the school that you randomly decided to send us to but didn't say anything about in the country you didn't tell us we were moving to until right before we had to move there? That school?"

"Yes, Jules," Mrs. Moon replied wearily. "That school. Now let's go."

"I'm supposed to go to Mrs. Star's house."

"I already called her. She knows you're going to London with us. Now put on your shoes and let's go."

Juliet watched in stunned disbelief as her sisters all tramped out the front door. Her toast fell to the ground, and was immediately snatched up and carried away by one of her mother's cats. Jenny had already called Mrs. Star and told her Juliet wasn't coming? Her mother had stepped in and rearranged her plans _again_ without telling her.

Chewing her bottom lip, the eleven-year-old raced past her mother and up the steps. Hastily, the little witch hauled off her bright green sweater and shimmied out of her faded, pale blue jeans. Muttering under her breath, the witch yanked on her aerosol shirt for the band Psycho by Association (her mother despised the XXL white t-shirt with the garish yellow, lime, and vermilion sprays of airbrushed paint) and stuffed her legs into blue jeans she'd desecrated with crimson spatters of acrylic and black spray paint. She topped off her outfit with the shoes her mother hated most – black and gray tennis shoes that had once been white, sporting claw marks from Jenny's cats, the rubber cracked and worn. Mrs. Moon loathed her children going out looking anything less than presentable. As a brief concession to possibly sparing her mother's feelings, she snatched up one of her black witch robes before grabbing a pen, a notebook, and the book _Before Midnight._

Juliet flounced down the stairs, waltzing past her mother and got into the car. Pamina sighed. The twins sniggered. Danica only deigned to surreptitiously trade her sister the book _The Perks of Being a Wallflower._ Apparently, Jenny thought _Perks_ was too adult for Juliet, which the eleven-year-old thought absolutely ridiculous since Danica, the owner of the book, was only a year older than she.

The two siblings kept half a wary eye on their mother the whole way to London.

.

"Juliet," Mrs. Moon tucked a strand of her youngest daughter's hair behind one ear and forced a smile. "Jules, please behave yourself."

Shrugging into the black witch robes, the girl shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and looked at her mother's strained expression. Irritation crawled up her spine. Behave? She wasn't four, she knew how to act in public. Honestly. "Mom, I'm not going to do anything to embarrass you, if that's what you're worried about."

"But, Jules, you're wearing _Muggle_ clothes –"

Snarling inwardly, the young witch had to fight not to rip the witch robes off of her body. She knew her mother had nothing against Muggle-born witches and wizards, at least on record and in all of her talk. All the same, their father didn't like it, and generally Jenny Moon gave Blake his way when he put his foot down. But after having her plans – her plans for life, she thought, a bit melodramatically – ruined by her mother's refusal to treat her like a human being, Juliet didn't really have the willpower to just swallow her mother's crap.

"Yes, Mother, because it would be such a shame if everyone thought I was Muggle-born, wouldn't it? I'd bring such shame to our family."

"Juliet, that's not what I meant – "

"Whatever," she snapped, and ducked into Madame Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.

Juliet looked around, eying the bolts of fabric hung on the walls. There were silks and satins, velvets, cotton and cashmere, organza, and some bright, festive materials that looked like they had been imported from China and India. Floating lights danced around the front room. The eleven-year-old reached out to touch one, and it jingled away from her. She thought it might have been a fairy light. At the redwood desk with the _Cashier_ sign hanging over it in gold sat a witch about Pamina's age, with long blond hair in a ponytail and a no-nonsense black witch robe with a gold MM embroidered on the breast pocket.

"Hogwarts?"

"Yes, ma'am," she murmured, looking at the freshly waxed wooden floor, at the shimmering Indian printed silks.

"Go along, then. I've got two young men being fitted in the back. If you head on to the back room, Madame Malkin will be with you in a moment."

Juliet shuffled back to where the witch had indicated and froze, staring. An observer unable to hear the girl's thoughts might have thought it strange that she stopped then instead of before, when she'd walked into the shop. After all, the only thing in this back room were fitting dummies, pins and needles and scissors, bolts of the same fabric as the front room, and two young men her own age on stools. But it was the sight of these two that struck her speechless.

"I'd leave if it were me," the boy on the left was saying to his companion.

The young witch had no idea what they were talking about, and didn't care. She could only stare at them, her mouth hanging open. Both in black robes, the now-familiar Hogwarts crest sewn onto the right breast, they stood side by side, almost a mirror of each other. But it was an Alyssian mirror, not a simple, wicked glass thing. The boy on the right, with his wild, black hair and eyes like green glass behind his spectacles – there was a rose to his cheeks and a gleam to his eye that made Juliet want to bounce. He wasn't a wild, laughing thing, like some of the boys back home, but he just looked so... so alive. Just looking at him made her want to take deeper breaths, try just that extra bit to live. And the boy on the left... where the dark-haired boy was thin but soft, no hard angles or cutting edges, the silver-haired boy was anything but. The bones of his wrists stabbed against flesh that seemed so thin, it might've torn, like tissue paper. There was no color in his cheeks, only that pearl white paleness. His veins were the blue of icebergs.

Juliet couldn't help staring at them both, the one with his pitch black hair and lively green eyes, the other with the white hair like ash wood and the gray eyes cutting as icicles. Juliet's body ached for a pencil, a sketch pad, so that she could draw them the way they seemed on the inside, but she had no artistic talent. She wished that, like Tanith, she could rip her feelings out of her head and scratch them down on parchment, etch them into paper, but she couldn't do that, either. The eleven-year-old was the odd duck in her family, lacking any specific talents – Isabeau's sharp wit, Rowan's flying, Pamina's music, Catherine's dancing, Tanith's writing. She had no idea how to show these boys the way she saw them, but her eyes practically vibrated in her head at the sight.

Then, realizing how avidly she'd been staring, the witch hauled her gaze away from the pair and looked around the room. Her gaze took in nothing. She was thinking about those boys. Something about them made her eyes sting with the very beginning of unshed tears. Were they brothers? Best friends? Enemies? White and black, light and dark – the two of them. That kind of pairing could only be found in brothers, best friends, or enemies.

She heard them talking about wands, brooms, parents, and something about a gamekeeper. Juliet ignored them. Her heart was slamming against her ribs, short staccato bumps into her sternum. Sometimes this happened to her when she saw something or someone that made her think really hard. Usually when she was reading, but sometimes in public. It hadn't happened since they'd moved to Stratford except once, when the leaves of one of Mrs. Star's ferns had been spread behind her in the wind in just such a way that, against the sun, it had looked as if the Muggle woman had wings. The sight had made Juliet sob uncontrollably for fifteen minutes. But she was in a store now. She couldn't afford to cry.

"All done, dears? We've got a young lady in need of her uniforms, you know," said a cheerful voice. Juliet imagined Mrs. Amelia from _A Little Princess,_ except not so stupid, when she heard it. Turning around, the eleven-year-old watched as the boy with black hair was helped out of the robes and hopped off his stool, trudging off towards the front of the shop. The pale boy with ice eyes still remained swamped by the black cloth of the half-pinned wizarding robes.

"Hogwarts, dear?"

Juliet nodded and shuffled over to the recently vacated stool, careful to make sure her eyes didn't go anywhere near the floor. She didn't know the boy with the blond hair – he could be dangerous to her, an enemy, one of the human predators she'd run into often enough at school. The girl told herself firmly to make sure she didn't show weakness of any kind in front of this boy. As the short, plump witch in mauve robes dumped a robe on her and began pinning and measuring, Juliet kept her eyes straight ahead, and made sure that, despite the gap between her top and bottom teeth, she kept her lips together like a normal human being.

"You're Hogwarts, too, I suppose," the pale-faced boy drawled. His voice ran ice cold down her back. "What's your name?"

"Juliet Moon," she replied. "What's your name?"

"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. Know which House you'll be in?"

"I don't care," the girl replied nonchalantly. "My mother says dividing students by Houses is stupid. Apparently, it breeds dissension among the ranks." At the confused look he gave her, she clarified, "She says it makes people fight. My mother thinks fighting amongst people our age is ridiculous. She says we should save our anger, aggression, and aggravation and take it out on the adults like she did when she was young. Be rebels. Stuff like that. Not focus on what House they're going to stuff you in."

"What if you end up in Hufflepuff?" The boy demanded, eying her with some measure of alarmed puzzlement. "Wouldn't you care then?"

"Not really. I have no ambitions. I don't even want to go to Hogwarts. I'm not even from this country. My father got transferred here by his job two months ago." Juliet bit her lip. She hadn't meant to say that last part. It was the lid to her current can of demoniacally possessed emotional worms. She could already feel the rage starting to push up in her throat. "I'd rather be home schooled," she added softly.

"Where are you from?"

"America," the girl muttered bitterly. The white haired boy gave her a sneering look. "Yeah, I'm American. You want to make something of it?"

"They're letting Americans in now, are they?"

"Only when your father works for the Secretary of Magic and is sent as American Ambassador to the Minister of Magic. Then they let Americans into Hogwarts," she replied sweetly, watching him flush. Then she sighed. "If you want to be nice because of who my father is, that's fine. I don't care. You can't help being English."

"I suppose you can't help being American," the boy replied grudgingly. He found it odd that he could completely ignore the chubby witch fluttering around them, pinning this and letting down that. "But your parents... they are _our_ sort, aren't they?"

"Eight generations back, at least," she replied, trying to swallow her ire. Maybe things were different in Europe. Maybe Muggle-hood actually mattered. Maybe English Muggles were morons. Who knew? She didn't really care. Muggle-born or not, it didn't really matter to her. Anti-Muggle or not, didn't matter. Often in Pennsylvania, she'd been the only white friend (or one of only a couple white friends) of black or Hispanic or Asian kids at her school. Juliet understood why racism existed. Didn't like it, but understood it.

"I don't think they ought to let the other sort in, do you?"

"Like I said, I don't care."

"Do you care about anything?"

"At the moment," Juliet replied, catching a glimpse of familiar, frizzy brown hair, "pissing off my mother. I'll get back to you when that changes."

"Why your mother?" Draco asked, mystified.

The eleven-year-old thought hard about her answer as Madame Malkin helped her out of the now perfectly fitted robes. While the plump witch went to wrap them up, Juliet turned to Draco and replied, "Because she doesn't hear or see me, and she hates what she does hear and see. See you at Hogwarts."

.

In the Magical Menagerie, Juliet was a little more upbeat. She couldn't help grinning at the black rats doing jump-rope with their long, skinny tails, marveling at the beautiful owls sleeping with their heads under their wings. Standing with Danica and the twins (who each held a little tabby kitten, one silver and one copper) the eleven-year-old glanced at her mother. Did knowing a bribe was a bribe stop you from taking said bribe? Especially if you weren't planning on doing the promised action that would earn you the bribe in the first place? Juliet didn't know.

But she wanted a cat.

"All right, Dan, Jules, go pick them."

The two young witches went over to the pen where they kept the kittens and peered over the sides. Immediately, a plump gray kitten with golden eyes rolled from his back to all four feet and trotted over to Juliet. She leaned in and held out her fingers, which the kitten immediately began to wash, purring loudly. Danica had already snagged a brown tabby kitten whose incredibly curvy tail was pressed flat to her back. The two youngest Moon girls glanced at each other, then snatched up the kittens and presented them to Jenny.

"You know the rules. A kitten that young, if it's to be your familiar, you have to guess its name," their mother reminded them.

"Annie," Danica replied promptly, and carted off the brown kitten to the cash register. Juliet looked down at the gray kitten, who looked up at her with strange, knowing golden eyes. He licked his nose, purring. The furry kitten seemed to peer right into her soul.

"Who knows," she murmured, almost absently, "what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" She looked up at Jenny and said, "Shadow." And took the kitten to the counter.

.

Shadow lay curled up and purring on Juliet's chest as the young witch stared at the brochure her mother had given her for Hogwarts. Every so often, her eyes would flick from the pamphlet to the ceiling of her new room, which was, to her way of thinking, freakishly bare. All her walls were. Somehow, the things she'd made for her walls over the years had disappeared during the move. If the girl did it right, perhaps she could talk her parents into taking her to London, to a craft store. Or heck, even back to Diagon Alley to buy some fabric off of Madame Malkin.

Biting her lip, she glanced back at the brochure, which, among other things, had some pictures of students in their uniforms.

"Can you believe this crap, Shadow? Uniforms! They want me to wear a uniform! I think I'm going to die," she muttered, staring at the pleated skirts, the white pressed shirt, the vest and tie. Why would they wear a tie to school unless they were being punished? Honestly. That's what had happened to her dad. He'd taken alcohol to school in sixth grade, the year before he'd been sent to the Salem Institute. Her grandparents had forced him to wear dress pants, a button-up shirt and a tie to school for four months. Ties were a punishment! Didn't these people know that?

"I can't wear a freaking uniform," she said aloud, rubbing Shadow's head.

Juliet shuddered at the idea. She had a hard enough time forcing herself to remain visible. Isabeau had told her often in the last six years to stop hiding, to put herself out there, to participate in life instead of hiding in her books and crafts. Now they wanted to put her in a uniform. Not just a uniform, but a dorky looking one like _that_!

The eleven-year-old glanced at the pile of newly bought button shirts, gray skirts, gray vests, gray socks. The clothes were made by the school, and once the name of their owner was written on the tags, as soon as a House was determined, all the trimmings and distinctions would magically appear on the items. That was why her ties were pale gray and white – waiting for her House colors.

"I've got to do something about this," she mumbled, stroking the kitten's soft gray fur. He blinked his sleepy, golden eyes and began drifting off to sleep. "Something...."

When Jenny went upstairs to tell Juliet it was time for dinner, the young witch was fast asleep, curled up around the gray kitten.

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** There are some notes below about some of the text. I have to say, I highly recommend the book _The Perks of Being a Wallflower._ Good stuff. However, if you're under 13 and worry about getting grounded, check with your parents first.

1 – Stratford-on-Avon is where Shakespeare lived (born, not sure). His wife's cottage is now the Shakespeare Museum. Stratford Theatre does a lot of Shakespeare plays. And the gardens around the cottage do have beautiful tulips.

2 – _Psycho by Association_ was the band in which I played keyboards and wrote lyrics in high school. The shirt Juliet wears actually belongs to my brother.

3 – A literary inspiration for Juliet (one of them) is _Harriet the _Spy, both the book and the character. Another is _Witch Baby_ from the _Weetzie Bat_ series, and Maggy from _the Blue Mirror_ by Kathe Koja.

4 – _Before Midnight_ is actually the book _Once Upon a Time: Before Midnight __–__ a Retelling of __"__Cinderella__"_ by Cameron Dokey.

5 – Jenny Moon is based after my mother. Oddly enough, Blake Moon, Juliet's father, is based after my brother, including the thing about having to wear a shirt and tie to school for 4 months.

6 – The four cats in this chapter are based after cats that I have owned at one time or another: King Sholto (silver tabby), Lt. Comm. Spot (orange tabby), Elphaba-Annie the Bendy Tail (brown tabby) and The Shadow (solid gray). Unfortunately, Annie was eaten by coyotes and Sholto no longer belongs to me. But Spot and Shadow are still alive and kicking (literally).

7 – _Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows._ This is a famous line from the old _The Shadow_ radio show. When we got Shadow, we modified it to this: _Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of little boy kitty cats (or mousies)? The Shadow knows!_

**Reading List:**

The Blue Mirror by Kathe Koja  
Once Upon a Time: Before Midnight by Cameron Dokey  
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky  
Witch Baby by Francesca Lia Block


	6. 03 A Brief Warning

**Midnight for the Nameless Witch**

**Chapter Three  
A Brief Warning**

.

.

Hello, again.

Sorry, but I know what you're thinking, all you skeptics out there. I said that this was a story where my sister wasn't the main character, wasn't the hero. And Draco, who is our main man, hasn't really put in his appearance yet. Neither has Astoria or Daphne, the two witches who really got this story ball rolling. After all, without those two talking to someone else (a charming girl by the name of Pansy Parkinson), nothing would have really come about, and the unlikely friendships and broken alliances so common in school that most grown-ups totally miss would never have happened.

And despite what everyone over the age of twenty-five who survived the second war against Voldemort thinks, it was those friendships and alliances that carried the war.

But you have to know what Juliet was like back then – angry, sullen, hating many and suspicious of everyone, and frightened, all the time. Our mother called her a rebel without a cause. Lost in the world, she didn't know who to fight, and who to protect, and who to fear, and when to run. We're all mixed up when we're that age. Even grown-ups are like that, for the most part.

But I'm breaking in here to warn you. Things are not picture perfect in this story, even without You-Know-Who. After all, you've just seen Juliet.

You saw how my sister was back then. But Juliet isn't the worst. Like I said, she's a coward. If she stood up and roared back at what she hated, her life would be a lot better – and a lot worse. But she doesn't. She runs, flitting from person to person, fighting their demons with and for them because she's too big of a chicken shit to fight her own. Yeah, our mom can be a nut job at times, and used to miss a lot (she's a lot like our grandmother, who pulled a lot of the same stuff on our mom that Jenny pulls on us) but she's not a heavy drinker with nerves of water, and our father isn't a super-strict, racist whack job from Hell with the looks of Lucifer and the temper of a rabid dog. Our mother never cut us open so she could drink our blood like some modern day Countess Carmilla. Our parents don't hate us for what we aren't and don't want to keep us in a box on a shelf because of what we are. It's easier to care about the major injustices of the world than deal with the minor ones in our own lives. It takes more courage to take out our personal imps than to crusade against the devils of others.

I'm warning you now – things change from here. We're about to take the first step into revelation, and into pain. The kind that wounds deep, and scars forever. The kind that the abandoned boys and the lost girls all know. It might hurt. It should. But don't be afraid. It's our pain, not yours. You can share it for a while, but it won't kill you.

There are a lot of turning points in this story, where without what happens now, what happens next would never have been dreamed of. And without the people we see here, see right now, what happens later would have disappeared from the time line entirely. And the pain we felt and feel, the losses we've known, would mean nothing, because the heartbeats and memories that bind us to those who are gone would've snapped and disappeared forever.

My older sister, Catherine – you've met Catherine by now – is a dancer. You look at her legs, the length and strength of them, and you can see it. Stories, the kind told through ballet, of love and magic and princes and dolls come to life and girls turned into swans, they run along her skin, move beneath the skin in her muscles, thrum in her blood like music. And she'll tell you that you can't have the ballet without the dancing, but you can't have the dancing without the music. They are intertwined, the vines of two roses grown across the space between window boxes. So too in this story. Without what happened the summer before our year at Hogwarts – all two months of that Summer of Storms – what happened that year, and all the years after, would have no foundation.

So I warn you that things are about to get dark. We'll walk together through the looking glass, but like Juliet said, it's an Alyssian looking glass. It shows both light and dark. So, too, will I. You just have to be patient, and remember the story ends. After all, you've already read the ending. You just don't know the real beginning. We're going to cry. We're going to laugh. You will probably wander whether the people in this tale are intoxicated. Things will get bad, and then they'll get better, and then they'll get bad again. Don't worry – that's life.

So here we go. I've warned you, and that fulfills my obligation as narrator. Continue at your own risk.

Take a deep breath. Prepare yourself. Get some coffee or a soda (maybe a Sobe Fruit Punch), grab some chips or a hamburger. No pork rinds, they're bad for you. Maybe hit the bathroom before you forget and end up nearly wetting yourself. Remind yourself of the ending of the story.

Now let's step back through the looking glass again.

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** I already did the disclaimer thing. I made some references to fairy tales I like (I am a humongous, gargantuan, fairy tale freak) in the chapter. In case you missed them, the thing about dolls coming to life is referring to the Nutcracker, and the girls turned to swans is Swan Lake. The thing about roses and window boxes is a reference to the Snow Queen. There is going to be a lot of fairy tale imagery throughout this fanfic. It's a habit I picked up in one of my college English classes. So, reviews are great. If you like, don't like, love, hate, want to change, never want to change, whatever – just drop me a line.


	7. 04 Draco

**Midnight for the Nameless Witch**

**Chapter Four  
Draco**

.

.

Stab.

Draco speared a huge chunk of steak in his steak and kidney pie, keeping the long inches of hair in front of his face to shield his expression from his mother and father. Not that either of them would have cared about his expression if they'd noticed it. His mother, a borderline neurotic, ate the olive from her second martini and pretended to be interested in her only child. His father perused his newspaper, eating mechanically. Draco imagined a poltergeist and a machine in place of his parents, but immediately shoved it out of his head in case his father somehow managed to see the daydream.

Stab. Stabbity-stab-stab-stab. More pieces of the hot meat pie skewered on his fork. The food settled into a leaden ball in his belly. It tasted like paste. Hesitantly, the eleven-year-old wizard glanced at his mother from beneath golden eyelashes, and Narcissa gave him an encouraging nod. He knew that look. It said, "Go on, Draco. Your father won't curse you and then fee your liver to the peacocks." The boy looked at his father.

Lucius Malfoy chewed his food slowly as he scanned the business section of the Daily Prophet. Gray eyes like ice seemed to slice through the air between his gaze and the pages. Draco wondered if his father even remembered he was there. He hoped not. The boy glanced at the clock. More than ten minutes before he could ask to be excused. Of course. They'd only been at the table for five.

"I expected you to try to get your mother to convince me to buy you a racing broom, Draco," Lucius said suddenly.

The young wizard dropped his gaze. He had told that boy in the clothing store that he would bully his parents into buying him a racing broom and that he would somehow smuggle it into the school. A half-jesting brag at the time, though he'd had hopes. But... but he hadn't even thought of it since seeing that girl in the store. She was so... bizarre. Her eyes burned. When the girl, Juliet, had looked at him, there had been something almost scary in her gaze. He'd never seen eyes like that – colorless, blank, like glass, sharp enough to hurt. Looking at her made his head hurt. She wasn't normal.

"I... I decided I... I don't want one this year," he replied lamely. Narcissa gave him a faux-concerned look, which he ignored. Draco knew he didn't sound like himself. The young wizard didn't know what to say to make his mother stop staring. He didn't want to have to explain. But those watery blue eyes, bloodshot and dull, made his stomach hurt. His vision blurred as Dobby, one of their house elves, came into the dining room with another martini for his mother.

"Oh?" Mr. Malfoy's voice trailed like ice water down Draco's back. "And why is that?"

"Dunno," he replied, refusing to meet his father's gaze.

Sipping his pumpkin juice, his mind flew back to earlier in the day, when he'd met Juliet Moon. What a freak. Her hair looked like a brush would have been an alien invader to its gravity field, and she had a huge nose. He'd never seen anyone like her.

"The phrase is 'I don't know,' no 'dunno.' Speak English, boy."

"Yes, sir," Draco replied. Inwardly, he snarled, I was speaking English. Don't you pay any attention to anyone but yourself? That's how people my age talk. It saves time. Why waste air chewing out three syllables when you can do it in two?

"Hmm. Well. If there's anything else you have to say, Draco, now is the time. Otherwise, I'll be going back to my newspaper."

His father was always like that. Straight to the point, no sentiment in his voice, no softness in his eyes. There was more cheer and warmth in a graveyard during a snowstorm. The eleven-year-old looked down at his plate covered in mushed pie. He carefully put his fork down when his hand began to shake. Lucius's eyes on Draco made the boy shiver. If his father's eyes could have jinxed him on the spot, they probably would have. The gray-eyed boy nearly flinched at the thought. He could think of nothing to say to the man sitting at the head of the dinner table – nothing the boy wanted him to know, at any rate – and so he shook his head, but Narcissa spoke up.

"That girl in Madame Malkin's. And the little boy with black hair. They went in while you were inside. Did you talk to them, Draco?"

Draco blinked. His mother had seen that? Blast. She was always looking when it was the least convenient for him. Not that he was expressly forbidden from associating with anyone other than Crabbe and Goyle (Crabbe was his cousin, after all), but there was always the potential for trouble with other kids. So the boy said only the very barest, basic truth.

"Yes," he replied. "Sort of. We were being fitted at the same time. We didn't get on, though."

"Who were they?" Lucius demanded sharply.

"Just some boy. He didn't give his name. Pure blood, he said. But there was a girl-"

"A girl?"

"Yeah. Juliet Something."

"Not 'yeah.' Say 'yes,' Draco."

"Yes, sir," he replied quietly. I don't know her surname, she's a Yank. Her father's one of the American ambassadors to the Minister of Magic. She's a pure blood, too, she says." The blond boy had to fight not to chew his lip, a nervous habit he'd learned from his mother that his father despised. Instead, he took another bite of the pie. The crust, which had the exact perfect level of flakiness, wasted its charms on the distracted youth who watched his father from behind gold spike lashes. Feeling rejected, the delicious golden flavor went somewhere else, leaving behind a piece of food with the consistency of sawdust that tasted like corrugated cardboard.

"Really? I suggest you improve upon your acquaintance with the girl at Hogwarts. Keep in mind that in some circles, it is not what you know, but who you know, Draconius."

Draco nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He wanted to say, Can't I make friends just because? Does everything have to be about politics? Why can't I have the friends that I want, instead of the ones you pick out for me? I don't like that girl, she's creepy. She does what you do, only different. She looks inside you. She sees me. Why don't you look inside me? Why do you always have to look through me?

But he didn't say anything, only nodded in agreement with Lucius and chewed his tasteless food.

.

In his room, the eleven-year-old stared at the posters, the pictures, the wall hangings, and the canopy of his four-poster bed. There were plenty of Quidditch posters – Bulgaria and their Seeker, Viktor Krum, surrounded by a host of veela; Ireland, China, America, France, Egypt, Israel, Australia, Indonesia, the Sumatra Rats; the Chudley Cannons, for whom Draco had a soft spot.

And of course, in the center of his shrine to his favorite Quidditch teams, was a poster of the Holyhead Harpies. Front and center, leaning on her broomstick, her left arm in a sling, Gwynnog Jones, the Captain and main Beater of the Harpies, next to Dana Spinnet, the other Beater; Keeper Ichigo Miyazaki arm in arm with Seeker Rebekah Terrier; and best of all, in a row in the back due to their height, the three Chasers: tall, black haired, brown-eyed Rowan Moon on her Stardust Streaker Racing Broom – custom made, one of a kind broom that was her signature flyer, a gift from Star Brooms for agreeing to be their spokeswoman – and beside her, the tallest of the three, the brunette, green-eyed Holly Ollivander with her broom and her wand, which held the record for world's longest at twenty-one and three-quarter inches, and his favorite Quidditch player in the world, Belladonna Malfoy. Around the edges of the poster were seven autographs.

Draco stared at his father's youngest cousin, age nineteen, in her burgundy and brown Quidditch robes, her pixie cut hair spiked by wind and rain, her clothes torn. A bruise blossomed on her left cheekbone. He'd read in _the Daily Prophet's_ Sports Section that there'd been a storm during the last game (where this picture had been taken), with hail as big as Snitches hitting the players. The poster had come in that morning's mail. The gray-eyed youth pulled the letter that had come with the poster out from beneath his pillow. He hadn't gotten around to it before now. They'd rushed off to Diagon Alley so quickly, there'd been no time. Instead of a wax seal, there was a guitar pick Stuck to the envelope – a white triangle with an Eastern-style silver dragon that writhed sinuously. Unfolding the parchment, he read:

Dear Draco,

How's my favorite cousin? Okay, yeah, stupid question, I know. Well, in honor of your eleventh birthday, please accept this (I'll admit incredibly late) token of my affections. If we make it to the Cup (and hey, who knows?) I'll send you and your parents tickets. Got everyone to autograph the poster. And the guitar pick was signed on the flip side by the bass guitarist of _the Weird Sisters_ (whatever his name is – I hate rock and roll). I picked it up in China. I've been meaning to send it to you for almost seven months.

Now, I gave your questions some thought. What to do about your mom, I mean. I'm not sure what you want me to say. Living with Lucius is hard. You and I both know that. I had to do it for a summer. You and your mom (and I) just handle it in different ways. Before you ask, she handles it her way because she thinks it's better than yours. I know it's not and you know it's not, but hey. What are you gonna do? You can't argue with your mom, you and I know that. I can have a word with your father if you like. Trust me, I know it can be embarrassing when your mother trips over air because she's foxed off her ass. But that's really all I can do. I can't really take your parents to task. If Narcissa wants to drink herself sick, there's nothing you can do, short of finding all the liquor bottles and pouring them down the drain. She'd probably drink mouthwash if you did that, though.

As for what to do about Lucius... you're stuck. Our grandfather hit our parents, and our parents beat the stuffing out of us. No one in the family's going to step in. Your dad has enough pull that unless someone proved he was You-Know-Who's personal love slave or pimping you out to werewolves or something, the authorities couldn't really do anything about that. I don't really know what to tell you, kid. Sorry.

Don't run away. Lucius'll beat you into next weekend. He learned that from your Grandmother Venetia. I loathe that woman.

Keep doing what you've been doing. It's a healthy way to vent and eventually, you'll turn into one of those starving artist types, become super famous like that guy from _the Weird Sisters_ – do you like them? Gwynn's dating their bassist, I might be able to get you an autographed poster – and then move out and never speak to your parents again except to send Christmas cards. That's what I did. I haven't talked to my parents in two years. I don't even do the cards – our publicist does.

Gotta go. Even though it's the off-season, and we're on vacation, I've got fanmail to get to. You're still my favorite cousin, though. Chin up.

Lots of love,  
Belladonna

PS – do NOT pour out your mother's liquor bottles. It'll be tempting as hell, but it'll get you hurt bad. And if you bring attention to Narcissa's drinking like that, Lucius might do something drastic. You know what he's like about the family image. Watch yourself.

Draco stared at the letter. He didn't realize his mouth was gaping open like a dead fish until a fly buzzed its merry way in and almost drowned in the pooled saliva waiting there before zipping away to safety. Watch himself? He was stuck? Didn't know what to tell him? That was the best Belladonna could do? She was supposed to help him? His cousin was nineteen, had been an adult for two, almost three, years. She knew what it was like, living with people like parents, and yet she couldn't help him. Seriously?

The family image, hmm? What could Lucius possibly do that was so drastic that it wouldn't be worth it, to embarrass his parents and show everyone that they weren't the perfect, wonderful couple everyone thought? Pain in his hands made him realize he'd stabbed himself in both palms with his fingernails.

He refolded the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope before tossing it and the white dragon pick into the tin on his bedside table that held all the others Belladonna had bought him in the two years that she'd been a Chaser for the Harpies. Every time she went to a new city, she tried to find him a new, indigenous design on a guitar pick, or a new strap, or a ready-made charm for decorating his guitar. She also sent autographed posters from the teams she played against. They decorated his otherwise bare walls. The only other images there were a poster of _the Weird Sisters_; the Celtic rock group _Queen of the Night_; the band _Nightspell_ that had a part-fairy lead singer, a keyboardist who looked like a pirate, and a guitarist who looked like a Viking; the all-girl scream-0 group, _Hell's Belles_ (with their own strings section and a group of backup dancers); and the instrumental symphonic rock band _Daughters of the Sun_. The lead singer of Queen of the Night played cello for Daughters.

Now the blond boy stared at his room, seeing the glossy rock gods on the walls. He drank in the vision of the people on his music posters. He looked at the lead singer of the Weird Sisters, in a coat made of black yeti hair and his acid green, dragon-hide boots; the Viking man on guitar from Nightspell with his braided, blond beard down his chest and the lion's mane of gold dreadlocks; the lead singer of Queen of Night in her ragged, white velvet dress and black, leather jacket with her blood-red vinyl knee-boots and red, fingerless gloves, screaming into the microphone, her blond-streaked hair in her face. He wanted to be them. He hated being himself.

Somewhere outside his room, glass shattered. Draco jumped. Sighed. His mother. She'd either tripped and dropped her glass, or thrown it at his father.

Someone roared. Narcissa threw another glass at Lucius.

Draco got up and grabbed his guitar from where he'd left it, leaning against his bedside table. He carried it and the new guitar pick into the loo attached to his bedroom. He often sang in the bathtub – great acoustics, but no chance his parents would hear him. The walls were far too thick.

The eleven-year-old settled into the white marble tub and draped the guitar across his chest, cradled by his legs. He deliberately pulled his hair in front of his face. The boy wore it slicked back in public because his father wanted it that way, but he despised it. He wanted it in his face, hiding his expression from everyone who always stared at him because he was so pale and thin and pointed, practically an albino with his white hair and colorless, washed out eyes. The wizard felt like a puddle, or an almost empty glass of water. The black slacks and white button-down shirt his father forced him to wear didn't lend themselves well to the punk-rocker image, but that wasn't really what he wanted, and he could make do with what he had.

Blast it. His head was hurting again.

Plastic hit nylon. The strings twanged. Notes hit the walls, bounced around like happy children, tugging at his hands. Where had he been? Why had he stayed away so long? That's what the music wanted to know. He ignored it, and played, just let his fingers wander along the strings. After awhile, he began to sing, toying with the song he'd been working on the night before.

"_Like nothing burns in front of a cold sun  
Want to go round and round, round and round  
Fighting through empty spaces and we're done  
Just want to go round and round, round and round_

_Can't hear through the tinkling chimes of glass breaking  
As we go around and round, always all around  
Can't see past the masks that everyone keeps faking  
As they all go round and round, round and round_

_Run through void and kiss the sunlight shining  
I just want to go all around, around, around  
Forget this life and live what I've been lying  
As we go round and round, all the way around...."_

Something wet touched Draco's hand, but he ignored it. Another wet thing splashed his wrist, wetting the skin over his pulse. It was transparent as glass, and hotter than blood. His head was pounding. He wished it would rain, so he could go outside and walk in it, instead of the sun beating down like it did in the summer. But wishes weren't horses, and beggars didn't ride. So the boy ignored the weather. Instead, he kept mumbling half-lyrics, adjusting here, tweaking there, and listened to his heart hurting in his chest.

His fingers danced, and he tried to ignore the sound of breaking dishes, his father roaring, and his mother shrieking. Draco wished he were older, just by a few months. Wished that it was later in the year, closer to September. Then he could just leave for real, instead of only leaving in his mind. Leave for real... he'd get to that point.

One day. One day very, very soon.

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** I know the lyrics kinda suck. He's eleven. He's going for raw angst rather than finesse at this point. Anyway, so here's chapter four. Hope you liked. I had to type it twice for you guys, so I really hope you appreciate my pain. Lol. Anyay, reviews?


	8. 05 Raindrops and Treetops

**Midnight for the Nameless Witch**

**Chapter Five  
Raindrops and Treetops**

.

.

Tink. Tink-plink-tink.

Thunder rumbled, furious and warm as summer storms. The air tingled with a brilliant charge, hot, sizzling, singing acid sweet in the blood. The hair on Daphne Greengrass's neck and arms stood on end. Lightning sliced through the sky, eager to kiss the earth with electric excitement. A singing splash of rain hit the dust of the earth, turning that spot to mud for just a moment before evaporating as if it had never been. More fat raindrops struck the ground like tiny, crystal hammers. Streaks of white hot light and molten heat pierced the stifling summer afternoon, burning away any traces of potential boredom.

Astoria Greengrass jumped to her bare feet and bolted outside the minute the raindrops began pattering against the glass of the huge bay window in her bedroom. Her sister Daphne raced behind her, a quiet shadow with coal black hair and midnight black eyes following a blurred streak of silver hair and electric gold eyes, creamy skin and washed out blue jeans. The minute they were out of their house, the two sisters screamed.

"I! Love! The rain!" Astoria shrieked to the sky. Lightning arced overhead, and she jumped up and down in excitement. "I love it!"

"Come on, Story," Daphne called, beckoning. Her hair hung in midnight strings in her face, sopping wet and soaking her Queen of Night t-shirt. She stared at her little sister, who spun in the pouring rain, a liquid crystal blur of silver, gold, and electric light. "Let's go! We'll go to the woods, come on!"

Astoria took off running. Her shoes slapped in the puddles, and muddy water soaked the white canvas of her tennis shoes. Her jacket, a thin black thing with the sleeves rolled to her elbows and covered in various patches and badges and pins, billowed out behind her. Silver hair streamed out behind her, carried by the force of her self-made wind. Daphne ran beside her, black hair swept back from her face, wind in her mouth. The rain tasted like joy. The air sparked with possibilities.

School would begin in less than two months. It was half-way through July – freedom fled from them on the first day of September. The two sisters decided they would make the most of their freedom while they had it. So they dashed between the slamming rain drops, slinking through the sheeting rain. Wind kissed their cheeks like a mischievous lover. They screamed to the clouds. Cart-wheeled through the mud puddles. Danced in circles until they fell to the ground, gasping for breath, the cold, wet grass soaking their clothes.

"Run, run! Chase the rainbow!"

"There isn't one yet, Story," Daphne reminded her, but the straggle-haired, breathless nine-year-old didn't care. They ran towards the dark line that would resolve into trees when they got close enough. Wet t-shirts and jackets and jeans clung to their bodies, steaming from their own heat.

"Look, Daphne! A laurel tree!"

The dark haired witch stared up at the tree, blinking in surprise. She hadn't known laurel trees grew in their woods. The only reason it mattered was that she had been named for the nymph who had run from a god and been turned into a tree. Because of this, the way her mother had told the story, the way Eglantine Greengrass could weave stories around her like smoke and incense and breath, Daphne had come to love that bedtime tale, that old legend about the origin of laurel trees.

Now, staring up at the tall tree, the witch dashed toward it, heart in her mouth, and hauled herself up using the nearest thick branch.

"Come on, Story! Let's climb it!"

"But... what if it's too high?"

"Come on," the older girl called, clambering up to another thick branch. The bark bit her skin like teeth. She squeezed the wood back. Water dripped from the leaves down her back into her jeans, soaking her panties. Glancing down, the dark haired girl saw Astoria standing on the ground, staring up at her sister. "Don't be a chicken!"

"I'm not a chicken," Astoria called up. "but you know what Mum says about climbing the trees in the forest. What if this one's spirit comes back and gets mad?"

Daphne had ascended six more branches. There lay more than twenty feet between the sisters now. Looking down at Astoria was making her a little dizzy. Maybe she ought to climb back down....

The limbs of the laurel tree rustled at her. Her heart sped up. The wind brushed against her skin, cold and hot by turns, sinking teeth of promise in her throat. Daphne's hands tightened around the limb she rested on. Just a little higher... maybe. She glanced at the sky, saw the violent winds swirling and dragging at iron gray and jet black clouds. She ought to get out of the tree, in case of lightning. As if to prove her point, threads of sizzling white spread slender fingers through the dark sky. Her heart leapt, urging her to jump into the center of the lightning storm, feel the heat, the heart, the hope. If she were only a little higher.... Yes, a little higher. Keep climbing. Out-distance everyone, move in front of everyone, and then no one will see her anymore because she will be out of place and the crowd she leaves behind her, the people she leaves choking in her dust, they will draw the attention of everyone's eyes. Climb higher, and forget the world below. It should never have tried to catch her. Keep going. Keep going.

"Daphne, don't leave me!"

Her little sister's panicked voice shrieked up at her, thin as a sheet of ice. The eleven-year-old looked down and saw her baby sister's pinched, white face and her eyes, huge and shadowed in her head, trying to climb after her. The nine-year-old kept slipping, scraping her hands and knees against the bark of the tree. Already, blood stained the right knee of her jeans, dark against the nearly white fabric.

"Story, what are you doing?" She was already turning away to look back to the sky, that welcoming, seething, boiling sky.

"Daphne, come ba – ahhh!"

Astoria's strangled cry arced like lightning through the forest. Black eyes slashed away from the ominous and violent skies, calling with lightning and howling with thunder, to see a thin figure hanging by both hands from a tree branch. Feet shod with mud-slicked shoes could find no purchase on thin air. Wrenching herself from the tempting tempest before her, Daphne released the branch she held in a death grip and shimmied down the tree.

"Hang on!" She called. "I'm coming!"

"Hurry!" Astoria's voice was tight with the edge of panic. "I'm slipping! The branch is wet, I'm slipping!"

"Just hang on! Don't panic!"

"Yeah, we'll help you," someone called from the ground.

Daphne nearly lost her grip. Looking down, she saw another girl, probably her own age, standing just a few inches away from the bottom-most branch that the eleven-year-old witch had used to start her expedition some ten, fifteen minutes ago. Even as she watched, the new girl clumsily hauled herself up into the tree. She moved like a fat duck, ungainly and slow, but her progress was steady. Daphne used this opportunity to drop down the last few feet to where Astoria gripped the branch. Laying herself flat on her belly, the tree limb biting into her stomach and crotch, the dark-haired witch held out one hand.

"Grab it!"

Astoria made the mistake of glancing down. Somehow, in the time it had taken Daphne to climb nearly to the top of the tree, the nine-year-old had made it almost twenty feet up. If she fell, she'd probably break a leg, or even her neck.

"I can't! I'll fall!"

"Grab... come on!" Daphne snapped, making Astoria jump. Frantically, the younger witch took a mad swing at her sister's hand. She glanced down again. The branches below swung and spun in a dizzying cyclone before her eyes. Ears roaring, body ice cold, the blood drained from her face. Her older sister snapped, "If you faint, I'll murder you! Come on!"

Slap!

She had Astoria's hand. Carefully, clutching the branch to her with one arm and both legs, Daphne got a good grip and muttered to her little sister, "When I say, 'let go,' let go of the branch. You'll drop to the next one. Catch it. Okay?"

Astoria nodded.

"Let go!"

Astoria let go of the branch. She fell. Daphne swung her as best she could, and her stomach collided with the branch two steps below – the branch where the strange girl now sat. As soon as the nine-year-old hit the tree branch, the girl got a good grip on her. Looking up at Daphne, the girl called, "You coming down or what? I can't get her to the ground by myself."

So the two girls got Astoria to the ground, one terrifying step at a time. By the time they reached the ground, all three girls were shaking with cold and nerves, soaking wet from the rain, and covered in bleeding scrapes. Both of the Greengrass girls stared at the new girl, unable to look away.

Her hair was a wild mass of tangles and frizz atop her head, a sort of mousy brown. Her face had a few acne scars, and one long, thin line that curved under her ear, sort of pulling at her face, making it somewhat lopsided. Tanned skin that had a hint of paleness, a touch of unfamiliarity with the sunlight, told them that if anything, she wasn't pure... whatever. There was something ethnic there. Black, or Spanish. Silver glasses hung haphazardly on her face. Her clothes – black and gray trainers with no socks, black skirt past her knees, white shirt under a black crocheted duster – were ragged and torn, stained with pain, and looked obviously worn (except the duster). But despite this, there was no sense of shabbiness to her. Shoving several strands of that frizz hair out of her face, she held out a hand with rather long, earth-caked fingernails.

"Juliet Moon."

Astoria and Daphne each shook the proffered hand and introduced themselves. They couldn't help staring at her. There was just... something weird there. Neither girl could put their fingers on it, but it was a strangely familiar weirdness. It gave Daphne a clutching feeling in her stomach near her appendix. Astoria stared at Juliet with her head cocked to the side, as if trying to decipher a complicated puzzle of some kind.

"What were you doing out in the rain?" Daphne asked.

The look Juliet gave her nearly made her gasp. There was such a sarcastic, angry look in her face that made both girls step back. But the smile that stretched her lips actually reached those angry eyes, tingeing the expression with friendliness. It gave both Daphne and Astoria a strange sense of sameness. Eerie sameness. They weren't at all sure they liked it.

"Same as you," Juliet said. "Running. Living. Hiding."

Daphne gaped. Astoria bit her lip.

"How did you know what we were doing?" The older Greengrass girl demanded. Juliet grinned wicked sharp.

"I know the look. What, are you scared I'll rat you out or something? Jeez, someone's a little paranoid." Then she glanced at the still staring nine-year-old. "Can I help you with something?"

Astoria kept staring at her.

"What?" Her tone was decidedly unfriendly now.

"You're a Yank."

That angry look was back. It curled Daphne's toes. Instinctively, the eleven-year-old ducked her head and allowed some of her jet black hair to cover some of her face, trying to hide from the furious, knowing expression on this strange girl's face. Astoria didn't even blink, just kept staring, as if waiting for something.

"Yeah," the girl replied. "So?"

"What are you doing here?"

"I live in Stratford-on-Avon down the Forest Road."

"We live in Ottery St. Catchpole," the younger witch replied.

""Storm's blowing over," Juliet said randomly, glancing up at a gap between the forest boughs through which the girls could see the sky. The clouds were already lightening to a pearl gray and, in some places, even white. The rain was beginning to ease up, as well, so that only a few incredibly persistent raindrops managed to penetrate the dense foliage. Shoving back the hair that refused to get out of her eyes, Juliet added, "I'm gonna head home. You probably should, too. The good part's over."

"How do you know this stuff?" Daphne demanded. "I don't know anyone else who would come out here-"

"In the middle of a storm, just so they could run, so they could move between the rain drops and chase lightning and ride on the backs of the four winds? You don't know anyone else who would do that? I wonder why. It's all over Anne of Green Gables. Anyway, bye."

And she turned around and walked off. Daphne and Astoria were left staring after her as she slowly vanished into the woods. Then the two sisters turned and looked at each other.

"Is she trying to be mysterious?" Daphne demanded.

"I don't think so. And even if she was, she's not very good at being cryptic. I think it's exactly what she said – we're all three those kind of people. The ones who chase lightning."

"So she chases lightning, eh?"

"Yep," Astoria replied.

"Huh. Weird."

"So are we."

"I know."

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** I'm tired. My hands hurt. Ow.


	9. 06 Juliet's Room

**Midnight for the Nameless Witch**

**Chapter Six  
Juliet's Room**

.

.

As soon as she was clear of those far too familiar girls, she ran. Oh, how she ran.

Her heart thundered, her ribs spasmed, her lungs burned, and her legs ached. Still, she ran, on and on and on. Tree branches cut her face as they whipped at her, tried to bring her back, force her to go back to where those two girls stood watching her dust. The wind sliced through her thin duster jacket and stung her teeth. Her eyes streamed with tears. The shock of every step rattled her body. Sobs burst from her body. All around her, the forest moaned and shrieked and called to her, C_oward. Coward. Coward._

Juliet clapped her thin, cold hands to her ears. She didn't want to hear. She couldn't let herself hear the voice of the trees. It accused her. It rebuked her.

She kept running.

The eleven-year-old ran away from the girls behind her, ran from their familiar, hungry eyes. She'd seen them running through the trees, whooping and cheering, loving the rain. It clung to their bodies like the feeling of their souls, the same way it clung to her. It hurt her to watch them. They were so happy with each other. Why didn't she have any sisters who breathed in the rain and danced through lightning? Maybe then she wouldn't feel so outcasted. But then the girl, the little girl like a rock-and-roll Christmas angel, she'd slipped, would've fallen. She was too scared to get a better grip. Juliet only wanted to get her down. She hadn't meant to look into her eyes and see the neon lights behind her face, the ones that had always moved beneath Juliet's skin. As soon as their eyes locked, her chest began to burn with an overwhelming sadness.

Tears poured from her eyes as she booked it down the path. The Forest Road was only a river of mud now. The young witch slipped in the black sludge, fell, soaking her shoes and her jeans. She tasted grit in her mouth. Lunging to her feet, the running went on.

.

Blake Moon perused a copy of _A House Like a Lotus_ as he sat, feet propped up, behind his desk in his study. He glanced at the clock over the fireplace. It was an old trick, enchanting a clock so that all the family members in the house were accounted for. He'd met a man at the Ministry in the Muggle Division whose wife specialized in making those clocks. Now he scanned the ten hands on the clock. They'd had this one made before Juliet had been born. That girl had her own clock, smaller, but more personalized. On the family clock, he saw his wife, Jenny, in the kitchen making hot chocolate because the rest of the girls had been out in the rain and thunder, helping Rowan get ready for the Quidditch season. Except, of course, for his youngest.

Glancing at Juliet's clock, he saw her little face pointing at _Coming Home – Running. _They'd had the hand for Juliet on the old clock taken off when it seemed to always be standing still – around the time she turned six – and placed on her own clock, which had been magicked by his sister Viola (who had a strange way with Blake's youngest). Once finished, the hand had begun to spin around just like the others.

Groaning, he put his book down and got to his feet. Padding barefoot through the study and into the hallway, he had just enough time to tie back the mane of brown dreadlocks before the back door of the cottage blew open in a shower of rain, leaves, and wind.

"Juliet!"

"Leave me alone!" She shrieked, and bolted past him and up the stairs.

In the door, which had yet to be closed, Danica and Isabeau stood looking after their sister. The honey gold eyes in Danica's head were blank, and Blake knew his second youngest daughter would keep everything she thought and knew inside her head, where only she could see it. In Isabeau's eyes – one the color of malt whiskey, the other a brilliant sky blue – there was that strange, hawkish look that he knew she'd inherited from him. Blake sighed. Neither would have what he needed to know. Then Jenny came in, and the anger was plain on her face. Blake sighed. Jenny, despite being their mother, didn't understand their younger daughters. Neither, truthfully did he, but he at least understood that trying to decipher their strange offspring would only alienate them, make them mistrust their parents. So when Jenny arrived with that look in her eyes, all Blake could do was hold up a hand and silently ask his wife to wait.

With heavy steps, the golden-skinned wizard walked up the stairs to the attic, where Juliet and Danica slept. On the right hand side, he knocked on the little door and waited.

"Don't come in!"

"Juliet, are you all right?"

"I'm fine!"

There were tears in her voice. He knew she was _not _fine. He also knew that she didn't want to tell him why she was upset because he wouldn't understand why she was in so much pain. Out of all of his daughters – and all nine of them were rather strange – Juliet was the strangest.

"Is it... one of _those_ things? A girl thing?" Maybe he _should _call Jenny up.

"No!"

The annoyance in her voice, instead of panic (Isabeau, Tanith, and both pairs of twins had panicked), assured him it was not one of _those_ things.

"Is it... did you see something?"

Silence. Then, "Yeah."

"Can I come in? Please?"

It was the "please" that did it. Blake Moon was not a man who said please often. He just never thought about it.

"Come in."

So now he opened the door to his daughter's attic bedroom, with all of the things inside of it that told him that his daughters got along, even though Jenny claimed otherwise and Blake rarely saw them.

The four-poster bed had been bought at a store, but the posts and head- and foot boards had been carved by Danica's tiniest knife, so that she could put in the most details. Dragons and roses and ocean waves and ships and stars were carved all over it, stories told by the thin blade of a carving knife – princesses in towers, boys with wings who fell and boys with wings who flew, fairies dancing around a little boy's head, a girl riding on the back of a reindeer, two small children in a cradle like a little boat, a woman with snakes for hair in the arms of a lion-faced man.

The bookcases made of old ballet barres and mirror glass that had been enchanted so it flashed different pictures instead of reflecting – girls who rode on fish, boys in towers made of ice, cities melting into oceans and skyscrapers turning into mountains, skeletons and dresses like cakes – with shelves made from the backs of broken guitars and cellos, gifts from Pamina and Catherine, helped by Danica. And on the shelves were books, thousands of books, bought in countless bookstores but stripped of their binding and rebound in embroidered silk, leather, linen, velvet, half solid and half patchwork, done by Tanith back when she'd discovered how "cool" bookbinding was.

Dresses hanging from a carved and magical glass studded wardrobe, dresses that had been bought in thrift stores by Isabeau so that Jenny couldn't ground Juliet for cutting them up and stitching them into new and far more beautiful things – a ball gown of butterfly wings, a patchwork leather jacket with the word _SLUAGH_ embroidered sloppily on the back in gold and silver, a pair of jeans with fabric flares on the legs that shimmered like rainbows and fringes made of plastic lanyard, a quilted jacket with patches in triangles and pentagons made from one of Blake's tattered undershirts and bolts of clearance-rack Indian and Chinese print fake silks. He could tell that Juliet had made those clothes because they were sloppily stitched, raggedly cut, and haphazardly thrown together, as if there had been no plan to how they were made. The clothes were beautiful because even though they were so amateurish, they reflected something – the way Juliet saw the world. Her sisters understood that better than either he or Jenny, and they used that understanding to make the things they did for their youngest sister.

Now he looked at Juliet, who lay in the depths of her closet, wrapped in a quilt of velvet patchwork and slashed up, old bed sheets with cartoon characters on them, shivering. Her wet clothes were draped over the headboard of her bed. He could see, from the thin wrist that poked out of the quilt, that she was wearing Catherine's old, white Swan Lake leotard with the feather trim on the sleeves, the one that they'd turned into a tight, tube dress.

"You want to tell me what happened?"

She shook her head and continued shivering inside the quilt. Her hair frizzed out like electrified butterfly antennae. Blake watched her for a few moments more before calling, "Bonny?"

_Crack!_

Their youngest house elf – they had six, a family of one grandmother, two parents, and three children, of whom Bonny was the "baby" – appeared in Juliet's room.

"Yes, Master Blake?"

"Could you get some hot chocolate for myself and Juliet, please? And perhaps some mini waffle sandwiches and a book, um... _the Rose and the Beast_, if you would."

"Yes, sir," and Bonny disappeared with another deafening _crack_!

"Juliet. I know I don't see things like you do. But I understand that, even though I don't know why, the things you see and think really affect you. There's nothing wrong with that. And if you want to tell me, I'm willing to listen to you."

"Mommy isn't."

"Your mother is... not like you. I don't think anyone is, except maybe your Aunt Viola. But even if she won't listen, I will. Don't you remember? I used to listen to your stories when you were a little girl. Things about islands floating in the sky, and princes who looked like genies. How angels had to be mice because only a mouse was soft enough and gentle enough to be how angels are supposed to be. And that we should always have a fireplace because winter felt strange blowing around a house with no chimney. You used to tell me the strangest things. But I loved to hear about them. So why don't you tell me now?"

_Crack!_

Bonny arrived with a silver tray. A glazed ceramic tea pot – Sonja's work – and two ceramic mugs etched with pictures – Danica again – sat beside a bowl of little marshmallows and a little saucer heaped with waffles the size of fifty-cent pieces, little grape jelly and strawberry jam sandwiches. Bonny bowed low and disappeared again. Blake poured two mugs of hot chocolate, added the marshmallows, and handed one to his daughter. She sipped the steaming drink, and eventually the shivers went out of her.

"I saw two girls, running in a storm, in my mind. I just imagined them, because I want a sister who'll run out there with me and feel what I feel. I saw it, and I wanted to go, too. The rain... I suddenly felt so dirty, like I'd never been clean in my life. I ran out into the storm. It hurt, but I liked it. I just ran. I didn't tell anyone where I was going," she said suddenly, glancing at her father. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. No harm, no foul. Keep going."

He listened to Juliet talk of how the lightning had lanced her chest and left her broken, but the rain had washed away any pain she might have felt. How the air stung her nose with the scent of wet grass and thunder. How the world spun like a mad thing as the wind howled and the storm raged around her, the wind whipping her hair. She talked about the girls in the tree, how the girl like a shadow at midnight had moved, flowing up the trunk through the branches, moving like a dream. How the rock-and-roll angel girl had slipped and nearly fallen. About getting her down again, and how Juliet couldn't breathe when the girl looked into her eyes. "Like in Beauty and the Beast," she explained, and Blake almost understood what she meant. And she talked of how it felt as if she were home, asleep beside her mother and only a tiny toddler again, when she shook the two girls' hands, and how frightened her soul had felt, and how it felt as if she were breaking into pieces when she left because she could see that they thought she was a freak even though they were the same.

When it wound down, and Juliet was on her fourth cup of cocoa, Blake asked her if she was okay with him listening, or if she wanted his advice. She shrugged, which meant she was too tired to make a decision and thus, too tired to pay attention to any advice he might offer, so he asked her if she would like him to read to her.

"Yes, please."

He picked up the book – bound in rose-printed, hunter green silk a long time ago, with gold embroidery for the title and author – and opened it. He asked her which fairy tale she wanted, and she said, "_Glass_ or _Ice_. You pick."

"Both?"

"Okay."

"Mind if I smoke?"

His only vice. Juliet once told him he was brave to take in the smoke of a thousand burning cities. He hadn't been sure what she meant then, or when she said his smoking reminded her of incense and temples and bonfires in winter. He knew she loved it when he smoked around her. But it was polite to ask, since it was her room.

"Sure."

Blake lit up, cleared his throat, took a deep drag, found the right page, and began to read.

"_She came that night like every girl's worst fear, dazzling frost star ice queen. Tall and with that long silver blond hair and a flawless face, a perfect body in white crushed velvet and a diamond snowflake tiara. The boys and girls parted to let her through – they had instantaneously given up on him when they saw her._"

Juliet sighed and allowed the quilt to fall away from her shoulders, to pool around her. Sometimes she felt like that. She saw some woman on the television, or in a department store or magazine or on the cover of one of her mother's diet books. Her vision would blur, but she wouldn't cry – her tears would be frozen. She liked this story, because she understood the girl, and how she saw everything. So the eleven-year-old settled down to listen, nibbling a grape jelly waffle sandwich. Her eyes, vacant and glazed, saw only the burning end of her father's cigarette in the room, and the way the carvings on her bed danced for her. In her mind, she saw the boy on stage, the girl watching him, them meeting, the story unfolding in her brain. Her wrist itched like rose thorns.

_"All that winter I painted him with his eyes like moons or his head crowned with stars or a frozen city melting in his hands. I had some ideas of how I was going to paint him riding on the back of a reindeer, eating snowflakes, holding a swan. He wrote songs about a girl who was a storm, a fire, a mirror."_

She wished someone would write songs about her. Or even poetry. Or paint her. Dream about her, or draw her picture – her on a skateboard or surfboard, gliding on old-fashioned rollerskates (though she didn't know how to do those things) or swirling on a merry-go-round. But that would mean showing herself to people. She didn't want to. Instead, she painted people in her head while she wandered around, holding everything inside. She knew it was stupid to keep it a secret, but she sucked at writing and painting.

Juliet listened to the deep timbre of her father's voice, with its Detroit twang. His rumbling voice made her think of factories and smoke, the billions of electric stars in big cities with their countless lights, the hum of a V8 engine, dust on a desert road, ink kissing your skin. Her father's muscular arms bunched and twisted, and the tattoos inked into his skin rippled with movement – music notes, roses, skulls, keys, blood. His dreadlocks hung down his back almost to his butt. He made her think of James Dean and Tupac combined into some Rastafarian wiz-man. She closed the thin, Indian silk sleeveless vest she'd made (by folding three yards of gold-imprinted crimson silk in half, stitching up the sides, cutting a hole in the bottom and then slicing through the front straight down the middle, then getting Isabeau to hem the thing so it wouldn't unravel under her seamstress butchery) and touched her face with the white feathers on the leotard sleeve. The witch imagined she was riding on the back of a giant swan that swam on a lake of green ice, and the stars burned cigarette red in the sky.

Blake got to the end of _Ice._ He saw Juliet glance at him from behind her eyelashes, so he flipped backwards through the book until he found _Glass_. It was Juliet's favorite story in the book. He knew why. The girl was just like Juliet – happy to stay out of sight, if only people would let her. Blake saw his daughter wipe surreptitiously at her eyes. He didn't quit reading – she cried when she read almost all the time. He'd read _the Road to Memphis_ to her once, and she'd sobbed and hugged him and just whispered "thank you" over and over again when he got to the part about why daddies did the things they did for their little girls. So the wizard continued to read, and his youngest child continued nibbling quietly on the strawberry and grape jam and jelly waffle sandwiches.

_"But the woman came to her then. The woman with hair of red like roses, hair of white like snowfall. She was young and old. She was blind and could see everything. She spoke softly, in whispers, but her voice carried across the mountain ranges like sleeping giants, the cities lit like fairies and the oceans – undulating mermaids. She laughed at her own sorrow and wept pearls at weddings. Her fingers were branches and her eyes were little blue planets."_

He saw Juliet scrunch herself up and pull the quilt back around herself. She didn't nibble on the sandwich, only held it. The cup of cocoa sat beside the door frame of her closet. Her father went on, knowing she needed to hear this. Each of these stories had taught Juliet something over the years, but sometimes, she forgot the lessons. When he would read that particular story again, she would try just a little bit more for a while.

_"She said, You cannot hide forever, though you may try. I've seen you in the kitchen, in the garden. I've seen the things you have sewn – curtains of dawn, twilight blankets and dresses for the sisters like a garden of stars. I have heard the stories you tell. You are the one who transforms, who creates. You can go out into the world and show others. They will feel less alone because of you, they will feel understood, unburdened by you, awakened by you, freed of guilt and shame and sorrow._

"_But to share you must go out you must not hide you must dance and it will be harder you must face jealousy and sometimes rage and desire and love which can hurt most of all because of what can then be taken away. So make that astral dress to fit your own body this time. And here are glass shoes made from your words, the stories you have told like a blower with her torch forming the thinnest, most translucent sheets of light out of what was once sand. But-"_

This time, Juliet cut him off.

_"But be careful: sand is already broken, but glass breaks."_

"_The shoes are for dancing," _Blake said_. "Not for running away."_

He continued to read, but now he saw his daughter's head beginning to nod and droop. She was tired. Being in the rain did that to her. It was as if all of her energy went into keeping her from flying away into some desert wilderness where lightning always struck and wind screamed and played with dust devils.

When she fell asleep, a few words from the end, he picked her up and deposited her on her bed. He covered her with the quilt, and took the tray with their snacks downstairs. He left the book on her bedside table.

That night, he wrote a letter to his youngest sister, Juliet's Aunt Viola, asking her to visit.

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** When Blake reads, those are the actual words in the book _the Rose and the Beast. Glass_ is a retelling of _Cinderella_, and _Ice_ is _the Snow Queen_. The book was written by Francesca Lia Block. She was the first author I ever read who saw things almost exactly the way I did... at least in her books.

This chapter was inspired by my father, who read to me _the Last Battle_ when I was ten years old, even though I could read very well by then, just because I asked him to. And by my brother, who at age nine read _the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ to his four-year-old little sister over and over again, because she loved it so much. And to my mother, who, though she often doesn't understand me, told me stories and read to me because we both love books. And to Miss Genevieve, the librarian at my old high school, for without her insistence that I be a library aide, I would never have discovered the book _the Rose and the Beast_, which everyone should read, just to see if you get it.

Waffle sandwiches are great. However, in my opinion, grape jelly only works well with Eggo Waffle mini-waffles because too much grape jelly just doesn't taste right. And you have to be careful not to overload on the jam cause otherwise you don't taste the waffle.


	10. 07 Viola

**Midnight For the Nameless Witch**

**Chapter Seven  
Viola**

.

.

Viola Moon arrived in Stratford again after more than twenty years because that morning she received a letter from her favorite brother, Blake, about his daughter, Juliet.

Viola understood Juliet in a way no one else did because Viola had done something that was by turns absolutely brilliant and totally idiotic – she refused to grow up, and refused to conform to anything. Pushing forty now, she still acted the way she had at nineteen. At nineteen, she'd been living in a studio apartment in Arizona with three cats with ridiculous names (Moonlight Shadow the CosmiCreepers, Lieutenant Commander Spot, and Troublesome Spot-Man the Shadow Cat) and two gargantuan dogs with simple names (Totoro and Bear). She had written teen-angst poetry that was published in undergraduate Muggle magazines, lived off of various flavors of jello, waffle sandwiches, and shrimp and orange chicken chow mein, and usually worn black yoga stretch pants or tie-dye skirts with men's undershirts over black bras. Alternately lazy and hyperactive by turns and prone to serious bouts of depression, she also owned more books than anyone in the Moon family's acquaintance.

Now, at thirty-nine and eleven months, she wrote series romance novels for a living, and had done for twenty years. With her money, she'd moved out of the apartment and into something that would've resembled a mansion if it had more than two floors and more than fifteen rooms combined. Since Viola lived with her husband Justen (their seven kids being grown) and their numerous pets and two house elves, it seemed like a mansion to her. She was still hyperactive and lazy, still dressed the same, ate the same, and acted the same. The only differences in her now was: her book, movie, and music collection had more than octupled in size, and now she wore her once-incredibly frizzy hair long, past her butt, and used her book royalties to hit the salon for hilights once every two months and chemical relaxers every week. The middle-aged witch also worked out (always had done, with increases only in the time spent) by dancing – show dancing. Still an active member in the show choir started by her old Muggle college, she danced upwards of four hours a day, five days a week. Because she ate like a pig, she looked like your average 175 pound woman and was still thirty pounds overweight according to her doctor.

For all of these reasons (and because she knew how to make rainbow sherbet flavored jello) Viola was Juliet's favorite aunt.

The older woman was greeted first by her brother.

"Witch Baby," he said sardonically, arching one eyebrow. Viola smirked, and socked him in the shoulder. Some things, such as sibling rituals, never changed. She replied, "Jah-Love Man," and they did a complicated handshake they'd learned from Blake's twin brother William as children. Then Blake told her about Juliet as he took his baby sister to the guest room. When he was finished, they'd unpacked everything and Viola was hanging up a tapestry she'd made over the summer during her biannual "I'm-too-lazy-to-do-crap" break.

"Can you do everything?" Blake demanded. It had always irked him. She did all these crafts, got Os in all of her OWLs, and still had time to write and work out.

"Absolutely not," she replied. She would never tell him that she'd done nothing but school work the year of their OWLs and had gained and lost forty-seven pounds during that time from lack of working out and lack of regular eating. "I dabble in everything but excel at nothing." She would also never tell him that she only wrote six months out of the year.

"You haven't changed."

"I know. I'm like pond scum – stagnant."

"That's unhealthy."

"So is dying. People still do it," she replied, and flopped down on the bed. "Ooh, I forgot how old I was for a minute. My back hurts." The thirty-nine-year-old witch arched her back, feeling her spine pop several times. Her black bra stood out against the translucent whiteness of her XL undershirt. She rotated her ankles, which also popped, and kicked off her white canvas tennis shoes before laying on the bed. "There's nothing wrong with Juliet," she said.

"How can you say that after my letter and what I told you? I don't know what to do with her! What can I do to make her feel better, to make her problems go away? I'm her father, that's my job."

Viola rolled over and propped her chin on her fist, regarding Blake steadily. Their eyes, so similar, locked – dark green ringed by brown catching sea blue flecked with gold; two different versions of the same word – hazel. He looked at her and saw a much older Juliet staring back at him. There were more scars from acne, faded now so that her skin looked mottled by sunlight rather than pigment. The white patch that spread across her neck and the bottom left half of her face reminded him of the time she'd gotten a chemical burn from bleach. Her arms were crisscrossed by scars from knife blades, broken plastic, pavement, snake bites, and cat claws. Skin peeled off of her chapped lips, and he could see the teeth that were too big for her mouth and discolored. His sister was not beautiful now, but she could be, if she put in the effort. Did her hair, washed her face, dressed up, put on makeup. She wouldn't. She was so like his daughter that way.

"Do you really think there's something wrong with that girl, just because she's upset? She's eleven. She's a girl. And she's very in touch with how screwed up the world is. She's one of those rare people that can see things under that very thin veneer everyone calls civilization and I call bullshit. That doesn't mean she's crazy or anything. It just means she's hurt. Nothing's going to ease that except her getting older. Eventually she'll take that pain and do one of two things with it. Use it as an excuse to kill herself – either passively, by refusing to live, or actively – or use it as a reason to live, and to go out and kick some injustice right in the ass."

"But... all her talk of wanting to be the rain and the lightning-"

"It's because she doesn't want to be here, on this planet, where everything sucks. She doesn't want to be surrounded by sisters who are masters at what they do while she has nothing to set her apart except something none of them understand. You can quantify what the girls do.

"Isabeau is a great lawyer. She's a junior partner already. She was valedictorian of her law class, skated through college and postgraduate school with a 4.0 average.

"Rowan is a Harpy. She's one of only seven women in the world who are good enough to be on the Holyhead Harpies.

"Catherine is a wonderful dancer, and has caught a lot of leading roles. Pamina is the lead singer of her own rock band. They're set to go on tour again in September.

"Tanith is like me – she's got more books to her name than most people have swallowed gum in their lives.

"Sonja at least has a hobby – she makes beautiful ceramic pieces. She can paint. Valeria can sew and crochet and all that crap, like me.

"Danica has made more money at a craft fair with her wood carvings than I did my first year being a writer.

"Juliet... what's she got, but that fire?"

"Do we isolate her?" Blake demanded. "Is that it?"

"No, your wife's just a bitch about the whole thing. If she doesn't get it, it's not important, doesn't exist. Which means the one thing that Juliet's really good at, Jenny makes it a bad thing. It's like that kid in that musical who wants to be a dancer but his dad wants him to be a boxer. Crap like that. What you need to do is let her see, let her freak, and then let her calm down. What you did last night... great. Keep that up. Now, where are the kids?"

"Why?"

"I'm taking Juliet out."

"You just got here," Blake pointed out.

"If I stay here, and see Jenny before I see Juliet, I'll hex her. Where's Juliet?"

"Um... I don't know. Outside... somewhere."

"Let's check the clock and then go find her, 'kay?"

.

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** I know, this chapter's short. But there's a reason, which is that chapter eight and nine (aka the rest of this chapter) would be too hecka long to be combined with chapter seven.

Ha, chapters seven, eight, and nine. Seven eight nine. Seven ate nine. Lol.

Anyway, so here's chapter seven. Viola is a very weird person, by the way. She's a combination of my choir teacher, me, my sister, Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby Wigg Bat, Gully from _Harriet the Spy_, Mrs. Who from _A Wrinkle In Time_, and my senior/junior English teacher (who's actually a man).

Viola is named after... um.. Viola. From the Shakespeare play... I think it's _As You Like It_. You know, the one where Viola impersonates her twin brother Sebastian and falls in love with this one guy who's in love with this chick and so the guy sends Sebastian who is really Viola to woo this chick but the chick is in love with Sebastian who's actually Viola and is not in love with guy who's trying to woo her.

That play.

Blake has has six siblings, five of whom are named for Shakespeare characters: Ophelia (_Hamlet_), Lysander (I think _A Midsummer Night's Dream_), Viola (see above), Sebastian (see above), and Cordelia (_King Lear_). His twin brother is named William. Get it? William and Blake?


	11. 08 Ginny

**Midnight For the Nameless Witch**

**Chapter Eight  
Ginny**

.

.

.

Juliet had done the unthinkable. She'd walked through the woods to Ottery St. Catchpole. Wandering around feeling absolutely stupid and irritable after she realized she didn't know where Astoria and Daphne lived, she got slammed into by something half a foot taller than she was, with a pointy elf nose, freckles, and hair so bright she thought the kid might have been a fairy before she got a good look at his irritated blue eyes and sunburned skin. His nose and shoulders were peeling. Her flesh crawled when she saw the empty shells of dead-skin blisters on his upper arms.

"Oi! Watch it!"

As if she'd moved in front of him just so she could be body slammed to the earth by some strange boy she'd never met before. Idiot.

"You ran into me, dipstick," she reminded him, shoving herself to her feet. The witch glared as she used her plain white t-shirt to wipe the dust off her glasses. "Watch where you're going. Or do you get your kicks wrestling unsuspecting girls to the ground?"

"Whatever. Lunatic."

Juliet's ears burned. Cheeks hot, heart stabbing sideways into her lungs, she lunged for him and grabbed his shirt, hauling him down to eye level. His breath smelled of spearmint and tomatoes. His eyes were wide blue balls in his skull. She snarled, "Want to run that by me again, kid?" If spit hit the kid while she spoke, she didn't care. Not right now.

"Never mind! Sorry!"

"Hmph." She let him go. Pussy. She wasn't even scary. Not like her Aunt Viola.

A man had grabbed Viola's butt once in the mall when she'd been out with Juliet and her family. Her dad had moved to say something when Juliet's aunt grabbed the man's wrist and twisted his thumb until he was on his knees. Her eyes burned green smoke flame in her face. Teeth yellowed by not brushing as a kid stretched and gleamed under fluorescent lights. There were no words, just the look of wishing on her face. That's what it had been – wishing. Wishing for bad things. Wishing it wasn't illegal to hurt people. Hurt them bad, so they didn't get up again. Hurt them so they cried. Viola had looked like a flesh-eating living skeleton for a minute, and the man had nearly wet himself. Her aunt had let him go when he started crying and Blake had touched Viola's shoulder.

That was the day Juliet found out her aunt had severe... she couldn't remember the word. Something like being bipolar, but better and worse at the same time. Her parents had explained it after they got home. She'd been eight.

"Ron? What are you doing?"

Juliet turned, and had a heart attack.

Eyes so bright and glassy they reflected the sun. That's what the eleven-year-old witch saw at first, because somehow she hadn't noticed the girl until she was right upon them. Her hair, sidhe scarlet and streaming down her back and out like a banner, caught the light. Blue jeans with rips in the knees, thin black sweater so worn it was gray and had thready holes in the elbows. Pale skin poked through like moons against stormy night time. She wore bright purple Vans with white trim and no socks. Her ankles were slender, not thin. Now Juliet understood why she had thought the boy was a fairy. She was one, this red-haired girl. Her magic had rubbed off on her brother – that's who he had to be.

"This psychopath just tried to kill me!" The boy, Ron, cried. The girl immediately turned piercing green eyes on Juliet, who braced herself.

"What'd he do to you?" The redhead asked.

"Pardon?"

"What'd he do to you?" She repeated. Ron gaped at her, spluttering, "What did I... nothing! She just... I'm your brother!"

"He ran into me, that's all," Juliet replied. She didn't rat on people and besides, it wasn't this girl's business as to what her brother had said about the brunette witch.

But this girl... Juliet wanted to be her friend. There was something so totally captivating about her. She was absolutely a slinkster cool chick. The eleven-year-old imagined this girl in raggedy black jeans with the knees ripped out and a white lace and velvet mini-dress with holes in the elbows to show the thin black ballet neck sweater underneath, black fingerless gloves, pale wrists poking out, ropes of sea shells and crystals around her neck – a neo punk fairy.

In the back of her mind, Juliet acknowledged that it was easier to visualize girls as cool things in her head than boys because boys made her nervous with their long arms and big hands, their handsome faces and gorgeous hair that if it could talk would say, "Touch me." Boys freaked her out, for the most part. Though not the red haired boy named Ron. She knew he was for someone else and would never look at her so that her pulse tasted like pollen and her heart grew silk wings like a Chinese butterfly.

"Mum said you and the twins gotta de-gnome the garden, Ron."

"I suppose you get off Scott free."

"Of course," the girl said, then turned to Juliet and said, "Hi, I'm Ginny Weasley." She thrust out her hand, which had incredibly tiny scars on the palms and one long thick scar down the length of her right hand. The nails were full of soil. "We live down over there," the girl gestured vaguely. "What about you?"

"Juliet Moon. I live over in Stratford."

"Oh." As if this were disappointing. "Well, then, I guess you should go on home-"

"This place is a wizard community, isn't it?" Juliet cried when realization struck. Ginny's crystal green eyes widened, and her smile resumed beaming. "You thought I was a Muggle."

"Yeah, but I guess you're-"

"A witch, yeah. My family just moved here a few weeks ago. So... wanna play?"

"Sure. Quidditch?"

"Suck at flying. Is there any cool hang out places in this place?"

"My house," Ginny replied.

"Can we go there?"

"Sure."

.

As soon as they arrived, Juliet wanted to cry. The tall, shambling cottage house leaned a little to the left, like a modern, British version of a piece of classic Italian architecture. The countless windows, diamond glass eyes, were full of house-eye-smiles as the two girls walked up the path through the wheat field. Her heart thumped in recognition. Her eyes stung. The sun beat down on them. It baked the soil under their feet. Juliet thought of summers in Arizona, where the touch of feet would mold the steaming asphalt around your shoe, making a sparkling smoking shoe print until another child came along and covered it with their own prints. Then she saw the garden and all thoughts of desert states fled her mind.

"Is this yours?"

Ginny shook her head. Her hair rippled like a flaming waterfall.

"It's my Mum's. Come on in, I'll introduce you to everyone."

.

Everything went fine at first. Ginny had six brothers. Ron watched Juliet warily, and she knew his mind was playing back how she'd grabbed his shirt. The twin boys, Fred and George, waved and said "hi" in two-part harmony. They were tall and lanky boys, like mesquite trees, and fey-like with their flame red hair. At thirteen, they had charming smiles that would've made the eleven-year-old witch despise them if she hadn't noticed the wicked blade eyes like steel that told her they were more mischievous than monkeys and their wits were rapier sharp. Double trouble. The next boy, Percy, reminded Juliet of a knight - he wore his pride and book smarts (Ginny said her brother Percy was a top student and had been made a prefect) like armor, a defense against something that hid in his eyes. She knew shadows - he had them in abundance. And Charlie, who had just graduated and was packing to go study dragons in Romania, was handsome in the way her Uncle Lysander was handsome. Charlie reminded Juliet of a red-headed Jack Kerouac, but without a typewriter. He had delicious biceps that bulged against his black t-shirt.

It was Ginny's oldest brother, Bill, that made things bad.

The brunette witch couldn't help wishing that she were old enough to marry Bill Weasley. She couldn't stop herself from hating herself for not being pretty enough, or from hating her mother and sisters, who most certainly were. Bill was visiting the Weasleys for the summer before he was transferred to the Egypt branch of Gringotts. Bill's eyes were like malt whiskey – which she'd seen her father drink with her Uncle William – all warm and liquid amber and smoky. He had a scar on his cleft chin, and hands with lots of scratches, bites, and scars. He wore dragon hide boots, like the lead singer of the Weird Sisters – whom she'd met – and a leather jacket like James Dean – whom she had not. His long, blood red ponytail made her eyes melt. His quirky half-smile made her heart do jumping jacks, and the way a flip of hair fell over those alcoholic eyes had her nearly swallowing her tongue.

When he walked out of the kitchen where both girls were sitting, Juliet turned to Ginny and said breathlessly, "Your brother is one socks-rocking rebel angel. He just ran off with my lungs."

Mrs. Weasley, who was peeling potatoes at the sink, gave her a puzzled look, but the brunette girl's new friend only laughed. She'd gotten used to Juliet's weird way of talking on the hour-long trip over to the house. Ginny patted Juliet's shoulder and nodded.

"That's what everyone says."

"Really?"

"Basically. Come on, I'll show you my room. Don't worry, you won't see Bill. He went outside to help Ron and the twins."

"He's a Bonnie Tyler boy, he is. Jeez," Juliet said as they walked out of the kitchen.

"What's that mean?"

Once she explained it, Ginny had to admit it was true. Bill was a Bonnie Tyler boy.

.

It was six o'clock. They'd been holed up in Ginny's room for seven hours.

Ginny was protecting Juliet.

Juliet was hiding from Bill.

Someone knocked on the front door.

"I wonder who that could be?" The redheaded girl wondered aloud, but the older girl already knew. She saw her father, with his Rasta-duck dreads loose around his shoulders, and her aunt with her hair in Shirley Temple-esque curls, standing on the porch of the Burrow. Viola was wearing her orchidaceous silk and black stretch kimono pants and floral kimono jacket (store bought, oddly enough) and she stood out against the dust of the ground and the pale wood of the porch. Juliet would recognize her aunt and Bob Marley style Dad anywhere.

"My dad and my aunt. I wonder what she's doing here?"

"That's your Dad?"

"Mm-hmmm."

She couldn't stop herself from grinning smugly. She loved it when people asked her to verify that the man with three-and-a-half foot dreads and a Celtic-knot work treble cleft tattoo on his left shoulder was really the guy who'd helped spawn her with her mom. Most people's dads were dorks, or cool in a grown-up way. Her dad was just awesome. And he knew all the words to "Jesus of Suburbia."

Bill walked in.

The smugness vanished. The brunette wished she could crawl under a rock and die. Or that the tall redheaded boy would kiss her. Her lips tingled like toothpaste.

"Juliet, your dad's here."

"O-okay."

Bill walked off, and Ginny made sure Juliet didn't fall down the stairs as they tried to make it to the first floor. When they made it to the front entryway, Juliet hugged her dad. He looked surprised, but he hugged her back. He smelled like cigarettes and something spicy and Asian, which meant he and her aunt were making dinner. The white muscle shirt he wore showed off his tattoos. Blake Moon handed her off to Viola, who held her for the perfect length of time before letting her go.

"Jules, you gonna introduce me to your friend and her family?" Blake asked.

"Oh. Yeah. This is Ginny."

"Hi," Ginny said, and then Juliet introduced Mrs. Weasley, who shook Blake's hand and they talked about having young daughters in "this day and age," whatever that meant. Ginny and Juliet just fidgeted and glanced nervously at each other. In the time they'd been hanging out, Juliet had come to really, really like the younger girl. She wanted to be her friend. They had the same taste in music - Queen of Night was Ginny's favorite band - and even though Ginny rocked at Quidditch and Juliet sucked, they liked the same teams. They both were mediocre at wizard chess, so neither one had an unfair advantage over the other. And the most important thing - the red haired girl understood Juliet and didn't make fun of her.

"Hey!" Juliet cried suddenly. She sidled up to Blake, who glanced down at her with dry amusement. He knew her tricks. Something was up. The eleven-year-old slid her arms around her father's waist and said in a high-pitched falsetto, "Daddy-kins?"

"Yes, Juliet?"

"If Mrs. Weasley says it's okay, can Ginny have dinner at our house? I smell Asian food."

Blake laughed. Trust his youngest to have picked out the scent of food on his clothes. He looked at the girl, Ginny, who was looking up at her mother with huge, pleading eyes. He hoped the girl's mother would agree. Juliet didn't make friends easily, because of the things she said sometimes. It seemed as if the red haired girl was okay with his daughter's strange way of speaking. He wanted to encourage this friendship, if it was feasible.

"Well...." Mrs. Weasley trailed off.

"Please, Mum? Please? Please oh please?"

"Let her go, Mum," Bill said, stomping down the staircase in his dragon hide boots. Juliet gulped. The oldest Weasley boy added, "When it's over, I'll go over and get her so she doesn't have to walk home in the dark."

"See? Please, Mum?"

"Oh, all right! But behave yourself! And ... Ginny, wait! Oh, for Pete's sake."

.

They ended up helping Viola in the kitchen before they were allowed to go up into Juliet's room.

Both girls stirred a big vat of thick, slimy noodles, mixing it with rice, peas, corn, carrots, and water chestnuts. Isabeau, for once dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt with a wolf on it howling at the moon, chopped up pork, chicken, and beef bits and tossed them into Viola's big, cast iron skillet. Rowan, windblown and glowing after flying practice, was running frozen shrimp under warm water to thaw them. Every time one was ready, she'd toss it in the girls' pot. Ginny kept sneaking glances at Rowan out of the corner of her eye, unsure if her suspicions were correct or she was losing her mind.

"Yes," Rowan replied to Ginny's expression. "I am who you think I am."

Ginny gasped.

"You can have my autograph after dinner."

When the shrimp was all mixed in and the meat had been cut up, Isabeau and Rowan left the kitchen to read and shower, respectively. Ginny looked at Juliet and said, "Your sister is Rowan Moon? The Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies? Have you ever met-"

"Gwynnog Jones, no. She's a work-a-holic. She trains the same, on season or off. Rowan doesn't want us hanging around during the Quidditch season - says it throws off her game. But she doesn't want to leave home forever and ever, so she lives with us during the off season."

"What's it like, having a famous sister?"

"All my sisters are famous... well, half my sisters. Tanith Moon, the author? My sister. Catherine Doyle, the prima ballerina? My sister. And Isabeau Gray, the famous defense lawyer? My sister."

"Wow. That must be hard. Having famous siblings. I know my brother Ron hates that all my other brothers have done all these things."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Well, Bill was Head Boy, and Charlie was captain of the Quidditch team, and Percy's a Prefect. The twins are funny and popular, and they do manage to scrape together some decent marks. Ron's really worried that he's going to be the odd-man out when he gets to Hogwarts."

"Irritatingly enough," Juliet remarked, "I know how he feels. Come on, I think this is ready to cook. Let's wait it out up in my room."

Ginny loved Juliet's room.

"Where did you get this stuff?" The redheaded girl spun around in the middle of the attic bedroom, mouth agape, eyes wide open to take in the violin-and-glass bookcases, the fairytale story carvings, the strange and gorgeous clothes, the Chinese and Indian print quilt on the black four-poster bed. Even the curtains - thin, transparent sari fabric the pale green color of some lilies - made the Weasley girl delighted.

"My sisters, mostly. I sewed everything together. The sewing isn't very good," Juliet added, glancing at the un-hemmed curtains, which were beginning to snag and unravel at the bottoms. "I mostly use basting stitches." She examined the quilt with narrowed eyes and saw that luckily, her clumsy stitches had managed to prevent a lot of damage to the raw edges of the patchwork.

"Wait... you made all this? Could you make me something?"

"I...." Mold-green eyes looked everywhere but at the fiery-haired fairy girl in the attic room. What could she possibly make that was good enough for Ginny? It would have to be perfect. Could she even do perfect? "What would you like?"

"What can you make?"

"Um... I'm good with purses. Quilts are kinda expensive and take a long time, but jackets only take a week or two. I can do wall-hangings and carpets, too."

"Can... can I have a jacket?" Ginny asked quietly.

Juliet glanced up at her from the floor, surprised. Out of everything she made, the jackets were the worst-looking. Why would this fairy-girl want one of those? But the brunette witch could see that the redhead's eyes, bright blue and glassy and full of sky, were riveted not on Juliet or the storybook tapestries or even the fairytale quilt on the bed, but on the quilted jacket hung up on its carved wooden hanger on the door to her closet. Those blue eyes drank in the white fake fur collar, the cobalt blue silk lining embroidered with silver stars and golden moons, and the patches, all of which told pieces of different stories: roses climbing castle walls, a girl riding a fish through icy seas, a wolf pawing at a door, a boy sitting on a lily with dragonfly wings, a king and queen on silver thrones with a skull hanging above them.

Ginny reached out a trembling hand and touched the white lace sewn into the inside of the sleeve cuffs.

"What is this?" She asked in a breathless whisper. Juliet shifted and glanced anywhere but at the redhead's rapturous expression.

"Fairytales," the girl replied.

"Really?"

"Yes," Juliet said, and opened her mouth to say more when Jenny called from below, "Girls! Dinner's ready!"

On the way down the stairs, the brunette witch looked at Ginny and said softly, "Bring me three of your favorite books and I'll make you a jacket."

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** So, that's chapter eight. Hope you're enjoying so far. I'm trying to keep Juliet from being a Mary-Sue. I'm really trying. If there's anything I can do to make her not a Mary-Sue that I'm not doing already, please let me know. And yes, this is going to be a long fic. It's still the beginning of August.

And NO, Ginny and Juliet are not a couple. There is no slash in this fic.


End file.
